WOW! I love vet school so much! Today was simply amazing, not because it was my last day of lectures—but because of all the fun and interesting things that happened:

I came in before my class to help my roommate with a bake sale she planned to raise funds for the Australian Rhino Project. We baked 300 cupcakes and decorated them all and then sold them in front of the student’s union building. All of the proceeds are going to the Aus Rhino Project who is working to bring a breeding herd of rhinos to Aus as a conservation measure. There will be 80 rhinos brought over in the next 3 years. The bake sale was an idea inspired after listening to a completely engaging and terrifying lecture on the future of rhinos in Africa (and how close they drift towards extinction).

Save the rhinos! Buy a cupcake!

I left the bake sale to go to a case study. This year we have 2 to 3 case studies a week (one for each class) that works to bring a lot of the learned concepts together. This case study was HUGE! It was complicated. And I understood…most of it…. (I might have to go home and review my notes again). The class worked through a dog that was brought into the clinic after being hit by a car. After looking at physical exam results, radiographs, ultrasounds, and blood gas analysis we determined that the dog had a pneumothorax and a uroabdomen.

Next was a practical class where we watched our professor artificially inflate a pair of sheep lungs to demonstrate ventilation/perfusion matching, pneumothorax, atelectasis, etc. It was very cool to see this instead of just reading about it.

Then I caught a quick tram ride to Melbourne Zoo where Zoos Victoria was hosting a Zoo Conservation Ethics/Welfare Q&A lecture with Jenny Gray and Peter Sandoe. The discussion was HUGELY stimulating, intellectually diverse, and even heated at times. We raised many complicated questions of best methods for zoos to work in conservation, culling, public education, and how to categorize zoo animals (are they wild animals? domesticated? tamed? companions?). By the end of 2 hours my brain was exhausted— but I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end my first year of DVM!! I can’t wait to see what my last day of DVM2 looks like 🙂

Now excuse me while I go hermit away and study for finals!