My name is Nadege Stoddart, and I’m from
Jersey, Channel Islands. I’m currently a
fourth
year Vet student and I’m studying a Bachelor
of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. In the
first
and second year we have to do twelve weeks
of husbandry and that includes all the species,
so dogs, cats, horses, etc. And then after
third year, by the time we’ve finished final
year (so
that’s our fifth year), we have to have
done 26 weeks’ worth of placement at a vets.
This semester has been a really busy one it
was kind of like the crux before final year,
the
last year of lectures. So from January onwards
we kind of had four lectures a day and
interspersed with that we’d have like two
hour practicals and then other days we’d
also have
tutorials. So it could be kind of three lectures,
tutorial, or two lectures and a practical.
We
started with Equine Medicine and then we moved
on to Exotic Medicine. So exotics we had
a lot more practicals and hands on as its
good for us to practice handling all those
animals
that people in the UK have, like snakes and
things, so that was really fun. And then for
Easter I chose to do a farm animal vet placement
which was great in Ayrshire. I got to do so
much hands on it was great and after that
I got to do two weeks of lambing and then
I’ve
come back to University and I now have a course
that we have. It is tutorial based, so we’re
in a small group and we just go through cases
and it’s to prepare us for final year.
At the Vet School we have a sheep farm and
a dairy farm, so hand in hand, those go with
all
the medicine we get to do and I think that’s
something that’s not necessarily accessible
to all
people at university. Being a rural place
we’re able to have that kind of thing and
I’d say that
really enhances everybody’s student experience
at the Vet School. It’s really fun to go
down
to the farm, they teach you to milk in first
year, we go to the sheep farm, they teach
us how
to age sheep and that kind of thing, and it’s
so important and I think without that I definitely
would find it hard to put my knowledge into
practice.
