WE DID IT!
Meet the latest Small Animal vets...
Smalls is "that" exam everyone talks about and once you've passed it, you're pretty much set. There are four rotation blocks we have to complete with lectures, trips and clinical hours then at the end we have a State exam so being in Group 4, I had Smalls last.The format is the same as all other States, you go in and pick your questions from an envelope (Internal, Infectious/Parasites, Reproduction, Surgery & Orthopedics) then have an hour to prepare and half an hour to speak to the panel.
The pressure was really on as it's so close to graduation that if we failed, there was only one more chance to re-sit it, a couple of days before grad. I'm infamously a last minute crammer as I need stress to study but because of how big Smalls is there's no way you can do that. I started studying 5 weeks ago, just after we finished our clinic hours, and have been working pretty hard every day.
A few days before the exam I just wanted it to be over and the worst part is not knowing which questions you'd pick as some I could talk freely off the top of my head and other questions were horrible; I'm looking at you brain tumours!
I really felt like I couldn't have worked harder so would have been gutted to fail and have to go through it all over again.
Once I got into the exam I was fine and the panel were super nice. I got lucky with my Internal and Repro questions so that was more of a chat which I was really happy with. Surgery I got Brain and Spinal trauma which I think was fine and managed to answer all of his questions, then I picked my least favourite Parasites question but managed to get through it, Halan even said he knows it's not my favourite subject as I resat it with him.
I still can't believe it's over and hasn't sunk in yet. We have our Thesis Defense over the next two weeks and then we're done - graduation.
Cheers
