Sorry about the delay in getting this blog out, to be honest I've been a bit preoccupied over the past week with vivas or celebrations to write one. Also I haven’t had any internet access since Hayley's house got disconnected, I'm going to go round Ian's in a bit to post this and get my drums that are stored there.

The last exams which I haven’t wrote about were the anatomy vivas on Monday and Tuesday. I had live anatomy and head and neck for a quarter of an hour each on Monday, and then Locomotor followed by neuro-anatomy and exotics together as a further two quarter of an hour vivas on Tuesday.
Monday’s vivas went ok; Live was fairly easy but was also pretty basic stuff so I doubt I could have achieved a good mark. I got quizzed on a dog radiograph and then a cow skeleton, so not a great amount of live animals in my live animal viva. I think I impressed a little with knowing all the intercostal spaces to listen to heart valves in the cow.
Head and neck on Tuesday wasn't anything like as easy, I was assessed by Glenn Wakley who's lectured us for the last two years, and I didn't really want to let myself down in front of him. The first half of the viva went really well as I knew the answers he wanted for the questions on the larynx and radiographs. However, he then decided to move onto some slightly more difficult stuff on cranial nerves. I know the theory fine, but I find it quite hard to relate the cranial nerve stuff onto actual specimens.
Tuesday’s vivas were far better and I was really pleased with my locomotor viva. Professor Domingo Tortonessee took the viva and I was quite surprised when his first question was "You are the drummer?” Apparently he'd managed to get hold of the tape of the vet pantomime and watched Levator play in the interval. It was pretty cool to be told by him that I was his idol; I think Domingo fancies himself as a bit of a drummer. The rest of the viva questions were a bit more taxing, but I knew most of the answers, and think I impressed a bit with my knowledge of the muscles of the fore-arm of the dog.
Neuro-anatomy was most definitely my best viva, the only question I wasn't sure of was "What is the function of the lingula part of the cerebellum in the dog?" so that was cool, and exotics after was ok. I got asked questions on avian reproduction which I know a token amount about.

Well with all the exams over on Tuesday it was off into Broadmead for some essential retail therapy. £110 later I'd got shorts, t-shirts, a shirt and a cd. All critical for Barcelona and Australia (though maybe not the cd, but I haven’t got any of white stripes albums and it was in the sale). In the evening a very large bunch of second years ascended upon Andy Fullerton's house for a bbq and many drinks.
I don't know whether it was because I haven't drank for ages or that I drank too much (probably a bit of both), but the consequences where that I didn't surface till 3:00 on Wednesday. I then spent the rest of the day very hung over playing on computer games until it was time to join the alphabet pub crawl. This had been going on all day and is an event for the whole school where you make a 26 bar pub-crawl during the whole day. By the time I'd joined it we were well into the alphabet, but never mind. I don't think the alphabet is very rigidly stuck to though, I think Jim the organizer just counted the next bar as ok as long as somewhere in the name contained the next letter. Hence O was the Hog's Head, where my friends and I joined in. Poor Pritchard however didn't join us for a good while after we planned as he went to the wrong Hog's Head on the other side of Bristol (was quite an amusing phone call when he rung me asking where we all got to!).
The pub-crawl ended up in Walkabout (don’t know where x, y and z got to), though I was pretty sober as I was driving next morning so it wasn't the greatest of nights.

On Thursday a group of us decided to go to the beach, not really the best idea as it was the one overcast day we'd had for weeks, though it turned out a great day. We took two cars full of vets to Weston-Super-Mare / Weston-Super-Shite, and spent the day playing on 2p machines, going on bumper cars, eating fish and chips, digging big holes in the muddy beach and watching Pitchfork chase his windwafter football all over the very windy beach. Though the place and the whether weren't ideal we all had a wicked day out, topped off by the great Roosult in the evening.

Friday was the dreaded day of results. We met up in the King’s Arms before hand then headed off together (strength in numbers) to the vet school. To be honest my results were a bit of an anti-climax as I already knew I'd passed three out the four subjects before hand. However I managed to get a merit in Anatomy which is a pretty awesome achievement so that was excellent. So results stand at...
Animal Health and Husbandry... merit
Anatomy... merit
Physiology... pass
Parasitology... pass
Most of my friends did really well. Mat got himself a distinction and two merits, Hayley got two merit, Pitchfork got a merit, Hugo passed all his, Tamsin got 2 distinctions and 2passes!! Paul passed all his and Ian got the same results as Pitchfork. The biggest achiever of all however was by far John, he managed to pass everything even though he sat his written exams with glandular fever, what a star! He was advised by the dean just to wait and do them in September, but he wanted to go to Australia and so somehow managed to struggle through!!
The only two in my group of friends that didn't pass everything were Steve and Claire. Steve failed just Animal Health (though he did well in the others) and Claire failed two by 1% each, so she has been allowed to just resit these two. Although having to resit is obviously a nightmare for her it could have been a lot worse, as if you fail more than one the policy is that you have to resit all four in September. In case you're wondering what happens if you fail your resits you're either thrown out or aloud to resit the year depending on circumstances.

After getting the results yesterday Hayley and I hosted a bbq at her house for over 20 of us. This went on from 3:00 till 10:30 when we all went off to reflex for an 80's night (no Wedge for once!!).

Today is organization and cleaning day (no cleaning done yet though). I've been down into town this morning to get some essential things for our holiday on Monday and after writing this I need to go round to Ian's to post it and then get the drums of him so that I can take them home over the summer to make my parents very popular with the neighbors?!
I think cleaning will have to wait until this evening, I just hope my flat mates have made a start (as I haven’t lived there hardly for two terms they must be joking if they think I'm going to scrub down the house for them when I get back from Barcelona).

Tomorrow is Barcelona organizing day and then I think an early night is essential, as we're driving to Gatwick very early on Monday morning.

Once Hayley and I get back from Barcelona we're either going to hang around in Bristol until the 1st or go to my parent’s house in Derby and then come back so we can move our stuff into the new house. Then it's back to Derbyshire for the summer!! Though I start pig EMS on the 5th of July. However after that the summer looks absolutely amazing!! I'm probably off to the Isle of White for Cows week in the beginning of August and then coming back to head off to Australia for cattle EMS and traveling with John, should be a great experience and will no doubt contrast greatly with the India trip last summer.

I haven’t a clue if this will be continued next year, if it is I will no doubt be able to make much more entries as I've been informed that the 3rd year is far slacker than this year, which has no doubt been the hardest year I have ever worked in education. However I do feel that I've achieved a lot, what with good results, getting a band formed and completing a half marathon it's been a pretty successful year.

Exams are almost over! Just four anatomy vivas to go next Monday and Tuesday and then it’s all over (for anyone who doesn’t know what a viva is, it’s just a couple of lecturers/professors asking you questions on the subject with no other student present). However before anatomy I may have a pass/fail or merit viva in one of the other three subjects (you can also get distinction vivas, but that’s pretty unlikely for me). These vivas are just to see if a person deserves an extra 3% to give them enough marks for a pass, merit or distinction. The list went up yesterday for animal health and husbandry. 3 people got pass/fail vivas and 3 others got requested attendance vivas, I wasn’t on either list so hopefully that means I’ve nailed animal health (unless I flunked majorly).
The big worry today is the parasitology viva list that goes up at 11:00, if I’ve failed anything this will be it! So fingers crossed.

The last exam I did (the only one I think I havn’t mentioned) was histology last Friday. A one-hour exam using microscopes to draw layers of tissues, slide sketches, quess the identification game and then write concise notes on a topic out of 4 choices. I think it went ok (compared to last year it went amazing, when I wasn’t able to identify any of the tissue types and put heart for a leg cross-section, I don’t see how I managed that now, but then Steve put ear for the pancreas so that’s a similar sort of error, I reckon Professor Woolly dreads marking histology papers, after a years worth of learning and most of us still don’t know our arss from our elbow).

After the exam on Friday it was out to celebrate, we all pilled into the local Weatherspoons (or Waterstones as I called it after a couple of pints). As I hadn’t drank for what seems like an eternity, even the first pint went to my head, so well, 8pints later Wedge just wasn’t on the cards… only bed.
Saturday I did sweet FA and then Hayley and I hosted a bbq in the evening, everyone was pretty chatted and hungover but it was still a good night. I did all the cooking and managed pretty well considering I’m usually dreadful at cooking, though to be fair all men are culinary geniuses when it comes to the bbq.
On Sunday I again lounged around all day in the sun playing computer games and was generally a bone-idle git. Then in the evening Tamsin, Hayley, Paul and I went off to Cribbs to see Harry Potter 3 (absolutely awesome, so much better than the last two, I don’t reckon however that it’s safe for most children, though the book can be read to children without scaring them, there isn’t no way a child is coming away from that film without nightmares for a year, I should know I’ve still got the nail marks in my arm where Hayley got scared during the film).

Yesterday I went over to the dissection room to go through some head and neck anatomy stuff for the vivas. Didn’t really get anything done at all. It was so hot in the DR I just couldn’t be bothered. In the evening I got a train back home, which coincidently is where I am now, hoping that I might be able to get some anatomy revision done. However if I’ve got a viva then I’m screwed as I haven’t got any of my notes (except for anatomy) with me, so I’ll have to pelt it back to Bristol.
The main reason I’ve come back is to get the car, as I’m going to need it to drive Hayley and I to Gatwick on the 21st for our trip to Barcelona.
Last night I lounged around with my parents and looked at their holiday photos from New York, where they went for their silver wedding anniversary. Mum says it was fantastic and apparently a must see, though perhaps not this year, I doubt the budget will stretch past Barcelona, Australia and Tokyo (big news on this trip is that I might not be accompanied by John, as he managed to contract himself glandular fever during the written exams, he still sat them, but whether he now passes or not is very dodgy).

Today I’ve got shed loads of jobs to do and things to sort out, and then I suppose I’d better get on with some anatomy revision. Think I’ll start off with a bit of Neuroanatomy, a dodle compared to the amount needed to be learnt for locomotor anatomy.

Almost finished!! Just histology tomorrow and then anatomy vivas ten days after that. I've just walked out of an anatomy spot which went ok. 40 two part questions where we walk around in silence moving from one question to the next when a buzzer sounds. We were tested on locomotor and exotic anatomy (rabbits, birds, rodents, snakes and tortoises).

As you can imagine the only thing I've done over the past week is revise and sit examines. Since I last wrote I've done Physiology, Anatomy, Parasitology and Animal Health and Husbandry written examines, plus the anatomy spot just done and an animal health computer examine yesterday. In the remote chance that anyone may want to read how my examines went I’ll list them:

Physiology
Went pretty good except for the data interpretation question on modifying male sex hormones in a ram. I think I completely flunked that part. Though the essay on thermoregulation went well and the short answer questions were pretty good. I got in an ace diagram of the vascular changes that occur in the neonate at parturition.
However I may have guessed a bit too much on the multiple choice questions. They’re true or false questions, which are cool if you know the answer for sure, but if you get it wrong they’re negatively marked, so there’s always an element of risk in guessing.

Anatomy
The best exam yet. Really went well! I was fairly sure about the answers for a lot of the multiple choice questions and there were four short answer questions I could do. These were bird flight adaptations, the skeleton of the tortoise, the anatomical structure in the antebrachial region of the dog (fore-arm) and the stay-apparatus of the horse (muscles and stuff that it uses to bare weight with no effort).

Parasitology
I havn’t a clue how this exam went to be honest. I thought I aced the Christmas one and got an E, so even though I think it went ok I obviously can’t judge parastiology at all. I got tested on itching ectoparasites in cats, protozoa in pigs and sheep worms. There was also a mini-essay on tick adaptations.

Animal Health and Husbandry
The exam was an utter beast, six 20minute questions to answer on micro-nutrient deficiency symptoms, ruminant carbohydrate digestion, blood types, disease eradication programmes for elbow dysplacia and PKD (polycystic kidney disease in cats), epidemiology and imprinting behaviour. I managed to write quite a bit for it (always makes you think positive even if you write utter nonsence), though epidemiology wasn’t ideal as I got confused between an analytical and a descriptive study… drat.
Never mind though the computer exam yesterday was a doddle… 78%, so no worries. I’ve calculated that I only need 35 % in the written exam to pass Animal Health due to the great success in the computer exam.

Well if anyone’s still reading (probably only my family…so hello Mum and Nanna) tomorrow night is going to have to be a big night out, there’s a lot of useless rubbish floating around in my head desperate to be unlearnt again, so it’s off the weatherspoons after histology and on to the Wedge.