im really happy after these two classes this semester in my confidence in the microscope department. i found it pretty fascinating when something shows up under the scope, especially if it was unexpected. like the lungworm i found wednesday from fecal float of a jersey milk cow. it was alive and squirming around! it was neat to see, and good practice in identifying the correct species from my notes. i also found a crazy looking mite from a hedgehog fecal, that i used my textbook to identify. this is why i liked the parasite course, but i have no idea what i am going to do on the exam without my notes. wayyyy too much info. i really wished the parasite course would have just focused on clinical issues, it is information overload to read about small, large, and wildlife. not to mention the last set of notes regarding treatments; i couldnt even see straight after reading all those medical ingredients. and a 50% gradient to the final exam? wow, i really feel like i am in trouble on the parasite course.

as for the microbio course, i really appreciated the layout of the notes and assignments this semester. it really helped me stay on track having an assingment every week, and helped to reinforce the lessons. i found the assignments in microbio class to be a better review than the quizzes in the parasite class. this course was very very well organized. it was fun to see the growth on the BAPs because i have never done anything like that before. it was also great doing the assignments and viewing first had what our notes were talking about when i came to micro and macro details. it was challenging doing both of these classes lab assignments because our clinic is so small we send everything out for analysis, so i havent had any experience doing any of these diagnostics myself. also, because there is no tech on staff, there is no one to really conference with about things, or saving anything of interest for me to look at. i found that really hard this semester. i appreciate that for the final we will have the aid of our flowcharts available. i find this to be very reasonable that it is not expected that we memorize this.

after this semester i am feeling like i would like to explore more into what larger clinics are doing with lab diagnostics and if the techs are spending a lot of their time gram staining and preparing slides, ect. i hope to be in a larger clinic after my program so i can really utilize these skills, because we are learning so much, i want to be able to use it all!!