Hello everybody. I’m sorry I have not written in so long, but this can just explain how much more work Senior year truly is. The week before Thanksgiving was the hardest week of my life, school wise. The one thing I want to mention is what I had to do for my Animal Health class. We had our lab practical and also a take home test due. The practical was a hands on test where we were given a goat to perform different procedures on such as taking its pulse, listening to the breathing, taking and recording its temperature(yes that does mean sticking a thermometer up the butt), and learning how to give several different kinds of injections. We also had to learn how to give injections to smaller animals like birds and squirrels. Everyone’s practical was different, but for mine, along with having to work on the goat, I also had to measure out a certain dosage and inject it into an orange, a squirrel, and a small bird(that were both dead). You had to know exactly where to inject the shot based on what kind of shot and dosage it was and what species it was. It was a test I was very nervous for because there was much it could be one, but I learned a lot from it and even really enjoyed doing it all. The same goes for my take home test. It was a test where we were not allowed to use the internet, just our notes and brains. It was really interesting because we had to take what we knew and our past experiences and use them to answer the questions. The questions put us in real world situations and we had to act like a real keeper and decide what to do. For example, a question would be if a skunk was brought into you with digestive issues what kinds of tests would you run on him and what would each test show. I’ll attach my final version of the test for you all to take a look at if you want. It’ll be a good thing to look at for an example of what a test might look like during your senior year. Animal Health Exam III 2012 (2). We have one more project for that class and that is a presentation about the captive breeding of a certain species. My group picked dolphins (of course!). I haven’t started it yet, but it should be a very fun and interesting project to do. This is a very hard class, but I love it because I really enjoy what I’m learning and I know it’s going to be so valuable later in my career.
My other classes are going fine, just not as exciting as Animal Health. I have a position paper to write for Mammalogy, which I’m choosing to write about elephant poaching. This Saturday is Unity’s Student Conference. At the end of every semester we have this so students can showcase their work they’ve done and some can even win money. We are presenting all of our work for my Interpretive Methods class and I will post pictures of that next week. It should be a good time, it’s always neat to see everyone’s work in one place. It’s held at the Unity Performing Arts center (a small theater owned by the college right in Unity) and is always packed with students, teachers, and even the occasional parent or townsman.
One highlight in my life this month was getting to go to California to visit the boyfriend 
He flew me out there for his Marine Corps Ball. It was so much fun and very relaxing. I did miss 2 days of school for it, so I suffered that next week, the one right before Thanksgiving, but it was definitely worth it. All the professors here are so understanding and if you have a commitment like that where it calls for missing some classes, all you have to do is talk to them weeks in advance and they will always do what they can to accommodate you. I talked to mine at the beginning of the year and then gave them reminders when it got close and they were all very understanding with me missing a class or two. The same goes if you need to miss for being sick. Even if you don’t let them know until the morning of, as long as you send them a nice email saying why you won’t be in class, they are almost always okay with it. The only thing professors here don’t really like is skipping class for no reason. They usually won’t say anything directly, but unexcused absences do sometimes count against you if teachers take attendance and use it for some kind of grade at the end of the semester.
And also, Thanksgiving vacation was amazing and very relaxing. I love spending time with my family and I even got to toss the old softball around with my dad. Ohio was so warm the entire break and I was loving every minute of it. It was literally like 69 degrees on Thanksgiving day. Maine is chilly for sure, but nothing terrible yet. We are going skiing this weekend, on Sunday! As of right now there are only 14 trails open, which is not a lot at all, but its something and I can’t wait!
