Friday, January 23, 2009

Attack of the group projects!!

So every professor has decided to assign a rather large group project worth a substantial proportion of our grades. Every group wants to meet at the same time, or different times, argh! Group work is really the pits as everyone tries to be the boss of the situation. I am pretty okay with someone else doing the majority of the work, but all I ask is that my ideas be given an open ear. We also have a midterm Monday on top of it. 5 groups projects....... eek. Oh, and I never updated on the last couple of exams I wrote last semester, ended up with an 89 in histology (3rd highest) and an 84% in cardiac physiology. Go team me! Classes could be going worse, we have very long days currently of nothing but lecture, We currently have a really interesting class called survey of veterinary medicine, where we get keynote members from and we sit in the same classroom for all 8 hours of it. I am an outside person so sitting in a lecture theatre without even any windows really gets me down, if it wasn't so cold I would go skating again, but -34 is TOO cold. We have a neat course right now called Survey of Veterinary Medicine featuring keynote members of all different facets of the profession in to speak to us about what is unique about their job. Had a really good one yesterday on learning to talk to the press. Learned some neat tricks as well as how to prepare, and according to the wonderful prof speaking, if you have a British accent, you are automatically trust able (he is from Cambridge). Also had a neat one called The Unexpected Consequences of Purposeful Social Action. The vet speaking was the head of the animal welfare department of Manitoba. Really interesting lecture, though I have never had a prof swear so much or call us "young bastards" so often. Was rather refreshing. He brought up some really interesting points though, such as an animals inability to time travel. No, I don't mean physically, but mentally. Think about it, your dogs greats you the same whether you have been gone 3 minutes or 3 hours or 3 days. Animals live in the present. He also talked about how this makes an animal not value its life. We all know all animals want to survive, its just instinct, but that relates back to the living in the moment thing. but do they value living the way we do? If animals can't comprehend time travel then they will not understand death as we do. Interesting stuff. An animal doesn't conceive pain like we do as they do not understand the how or why behind it, only that they want it to end. This brings up other ethical debates such cancer treatment in pets, or prosthetic legs in horses. They don't understand why they are in pain, or that the pain will help them in some near future (remember, no time travel), they only know that they are willing to do anything to make it stop. His main example was the horse slaughter debaucle in the US. Anyways, enough deep talk. Good news is I get to go home next weekend! YAY! The weather should be decent and I am dieing to get outside and get some fresh air and not think of school for a few days. I leave you with a few pictures of my boys! Will get some news one of them in their furry wonder next weekend.
My Main Man Digger

My boy Eurus, not sure who got the best of that bath......

1 comment:

Sherry Sikstrom said...

Well said Kiddo !!! See you next weekend maybe if I get feeling good enough, your mom and I will joins you for a short spin.