Vet Student at Košice

 Turns out I'm not the best at keeping a blog!  It's been a bit of a whirlwind the last few weeks. The university has shut down for the time-being due to covid-19, most likely until next semester. All our lectures and practicals are online now (the practicals have mostly been replaced with videos or small weekly tests.  Rob and I have come back down to Cornwall, and moved out of our house in Surrey. Hopefully that's the last big change for a while, because it has been fairly disruptive to my studying. One less thing to worry about though. It's lovely in the barn with the log burner and a cat to keep us company. I've been learning a lot, and learning a lot about learning. There are a few methods that I've found to be very helpful (active recall questions and Anki flashcards to start with). I think the effort I put into learning about learning is paying off - I've got pretty good grades in nearly all my tests so far!  Some subjects are much harder than others,...

I have 10 credit tests over the next 3.5 weeks. Several of them are just little tests about what we've learnt in practicals that I'm not too worried about. The others are tests about the practicals we never got to do which does make things a bit harder. I think the lecturers are very good putting all the necessary informatin into the slides, and have been happy to re-explain any bits that don't quite make sense.  After that, it's Christmas break! Just kidding, it's the winter exam period.  I'm hoping to get at least 1 exam (latin) done before Christmas, and hopefully biophysics too if I can. We have all of January to do all of the exams, which in my case is 7 of them. Exam dates haven't been released yet so I haven't been able to plan a bit of a revision timetable yet. Trying to remind myself to look at individual trees at one time rather than the whole forest all at once...  I feel like I blinked and suddenly I'm nearly halfway through my first year...

I've completed my first week of vet school! How crazy is that! It was just about as I expected it would be - lots of describing how the exams work, how to get credit, reading safety instructions (we've been told in almost every lesson not to put our fingers into electrical sockets, wonder what the story is there). From there, we jumped right into the lectures!  Most of us have applied for exemptions now, too. It was an awful lot of printing out and highlighting, and we have to wait just over a month to hear back. I hope I get at least a partial exemption from a few things, it would be great to have slightly less exam questions. The process was a bit confusing, so maybe I'll write a post about it later. The uni hasn't officially said anything about closing down because of covid, but there are rumours of confirmed cases in the dorms, and the lecturers have mostly elected to do online lectures. Hopefully we still get to do practicals (I learnt how to pick up a mouse and a...

 Today was my first day of vet school. I've never been so excited to go to school before, I was up at 6:30, raring to go. I'd packed my bag and my lunch the night before, so I was out the door bang on 7:30am for my 8:05 lecture. I can't believe I ever complained about 9am lectures before, what a luxury! The building was a bit confusing - there was a huge gate in front of the door, and it was locked so we all milled around outside for a while waiting for someone to let us in. Turns out, we were stood at the wrong door but thankfully someone came around to correct us.  Histology and embryology was really interesting. We started by learning about microscopes and common and special stains for slides, and later in the afternoon we had a practical. The practical was much shorter than usual because we were learning to recognise what stains look like on slides.  Neurons stained with silver Had my first ever Latin lesson today which was a bit rocky, but I think I just need to sit ...

It's the last day before the course starts! I'm very excited to get going. I've been doing a bit of learning to refresh my memory on some things I've half-forgotten since A-levels. Me and two other people went back to Malá farma today. So nice to be around animals for a couple of hours. Apparently there's a cynology module later in the course, and one of the practicals is at Malá farma - if they know you they're more likely to give you a nice dog! Even if that's not true, it's probably not a bad idea to be friendly with as many people as I can. I got to play with the kittens today too. They're so tiny and I could have easily snuck them back in my backpack...  Tiny kittens! They were purring so loudly! Had the weekly family zoom call when I got back - hi nanny and grandpa! Very lovely to see everyone, and I think it's going to be really important to my sanity here to have a bit of regularity.  A quick update on the cases I've made previous blo...

Today Nicole and I went into town to give a bunch of stuff to a charity shop in town. We took the tram for the first time which was great! Really easy to get a ticket. Apparently not all tram stops have ticket machines so you could even buy a few to have on you just in case (you stamp the ticket when you get on the tram, and that's when it's activated). Me in a doorway! The first shop we went to was a pawn shop and did not understand us trying to give them stuff for free. So, we walked further into town and gave the stuff to another shop. They also seemed confused that we were giving it to them for free so I maybe missed out on a few euros. No big deal though, happy to have gotten rid of it.  One of the many gorgeous buildings in the old town Then, we went to this restaurant called VEGAHEAVEN, and I ordered a grilled tofu cheese. Though, I didn't get a grilled tofu cheese, just grilled tofu. It was still really tasty but not what I was expecting. Seems to be a theme so far....

I still don't have WiFi! Unfortunately we haven't had internet access since we arrived on the 4th of September. The WiFi network requires our student email to log in, and I won't get access to that until the 21st! The last few days have been concerned with signing papers and payments. We had to sign multiple copies of the same document, many times, which got a bit tedious. We're so close to starting though I don't even mind.  I got my ISIC card and it's beginning to feel real! Very exciting that I'm actually a student again, and finally a vet student! We have to apply for temporary residence permit within the next 90 days which is a little daunting (I've got to prove that I've got a clear criminal record, prove that I've got enough money in a Slovak bank account, and a bunch of other things. The uni is helping us out a little bit, which is great because I really wouldn't know where to start otherwise.  Nicole and I bought some textbooks at th...