Not knowing what to expect...

Not knowing what to expect for the first anatomy exam is killing me. So last week was my first week in vet school. Technically, it was only half a week so I'm actually considering tomorrow the start of my ACTUAL first week in vet school. Either way though, I have completed 3 full days of vet school and so far I enjoy tremendously. Unfortunately, I'm freaking out on the inside not because I'm super stressed about how much  we need to know for anatomy (which is a lot) but more because I just don't know what to expect. Basically, I don't know enough about what to expect to be any more descriptive than just "a lot" when describing what we need to know. Of what we've gone over so far in class, I know we'll need to know the bones of the thoracic limb, each part of each bone, the muscles, the muscle attachments, the muscle actions, the joints, but where does it end? Do we need to know the fascia? Do we need to know (for the first exam) the muscle attachments that are not on the thoracic limb (like the sternebrae ones)? When it comes to the muscle actions, will it be sufficient to know just whether it extends or flexes that particular joint or will we have to know all the other minor actions as well? My assumption (both a safe, and probably accurate assumption) is that we will need to know everything in as much detail as possible. And that's okay with me - I truly do enjoy learning about this stuff. I just wish I knew what to expect for the test. The anticipation of the first anatomy exam (in a week and a half) is almost too much to handle.


With that being said, I honestly do feel behind. I feel like I probably know about 75% of what I should know if I were on a good pace. Being behind isn't really stressing me out though. I think I just feel behind because it's been a WHOLE 2 DAYS since our last "official" anatomy lab and I definitely think our scheduled anatomy labs help me a lot. I used the words "official" and "scheduled" to describe the anatomy labs that I was referring to because there have also been a few times already that I have gone to the anatomy lab during off hours just to review/study. Tomorrow is Monday though, which means it's time for 4 (possibly more depending how I spend my weekend(s)) straight days of anatomy lab this week and every week following. So after tomorrow I'm hoping to feel on track again.


I started this post with no particular ideas or organization in mind and it has led me to this....