Vet Student: Day in a Life

Hi! This is a post I wrote about a year ago for my other blog Young and Unheroic. I’ve imported it here on Vet Bites as it has some useful info! :)

Have you ever wondered what vet students do on a day-to-day basis? 

Let me share with you my experience in the first year of bachelor's in vet school at the University of Sydney… 

In your first year, it’s mainly lectures, practicals, and tutorials. The units you will be studying will mostly be very broad subjects such as Chemistry, Life and Evolution, or Statistics, rather than specifically vet-focused units of study. You can read more about these subjects in my ‘Vet Student: Week in a Life’ post!

What I really enjoyed about university this year was that it was quite flexible as to how you distributed your classes across your weekly timetable. 

You could space out your sessions evenly throughout the week, or have a few go-hard days and then some less busy days. Or if you were like me, and were only able to be at university ~3 days a week due to sporting commitments, then squeezing all (or most!) of your sessions into 2-3 days was actually surprisingly doable (well, in the first year anyway)!

So, what did our days look like?

Example 1: My least busy day in a life

10am: Concepts of Animal Management - lecture

Day finished! :)

Example 2: My most busy day in a life

9am: Chemistry – lecture

10am: Economic Environment of Agriculture – lecture

11am: Economic Environment of Agriculture – lecture

12pm: Economic Environment of Agriculture – tutorial

1pm: From Molecules to Ecosystems – lecture

2pm: Concepts of Animal Management – lecture

3pm: Concepts of Animal Management - lecture

Um, where is my lunch break?!

The prospect of having no breaks in between any of your classes, as in Example 2, might be horrifying. Yes, it may be mentally draining and physically exhausting to learn from 9-4, non-stop, but it doesn’t have to be your typical uni day! 

The reason it had to be so crammed was because of sport and so I wasn’t free the entire week for university. Even then, I only subjected myself to this kind of fast-paced frenzy of a timetable for just two days. In compensation, every other day was basically uni-free!

I’ve shown you the least and most busy days, so now I guess you’re wondering what the happy medium looks like?

Example 3: A day in a life

8am: Statistics – lecture

9am: Chemistry – lecture

10am:

11am:

12pm: Animals and Us – lecture

1pm:

2pm:

3pm: Statistics – practical

4pm: Statistics – practical

I sometimes skipped the 8am lecture! Naughty!

Example 4: A day in a life

8am:

9am: Chemistry – lecture

10am: Life and Evolution – practical (labs)

11am: Life and Evolution – practical (labs)

12pm: Life and Evolution – practical (labs)

1pm:

2pm:

3pm: Life and Evolution – lecture

4pm:

And Fridays were for farm practicals and nothing else! Read all about our lessons with the pigs, sheep, cattle, chickens, and aquaculture here.

Example 5: Farm practical day in a life

8:30am: Arrive on the farm, sign-in, change into overalls and gumboots

   9am: Pigs

10am: Pigs

11am: Pigs

12pm: lunch break

1pm: Beef Cattle and Pasture Agronomy

2pm: Beef Cattle and Pasture Agronomy

3pm: Beef Cattle and Pasture Agronomy

Does it sound interesting?

If you want to know more about the units of study I’ve mentioned above, you can read about them here!

I hope this helped in some way to give you an idea of what a university daily schedule might look like for a vet student. Remember, this is only for first year! I have a feeling that the days are going to be longer and busier next year. You can do it!

Enjoy your weekend and the last few days of 2018!

Love, Young and Unheroic