How does everyone like the new format? I decided I didn't have time to make a cool personalized banner like Brandon and Katherine, so I copped out with a premade layout. Don't judge me! Anyway, I like it much better.

So my first week of vet school is over! I'm going to try and remember the highlights so I can give you guys a run down of what happened.

Well, the first day, I had to get up ridiculously early to get to school a full hour before my 8:00 class. Why on earth, you ask? Well, you see, during orientation, everyone in the administration and upper classes made a big deal about seating, saying that "oh, if you get a bad seat on the first day you're screwed" or "people get really territorial over their seats." Of course, self-fulfilling prophecy, all the talk about people freaking out about seats made people freak out about seats, a few talking about getting there at 6:30 to stake out their favorite spot. Not wanting to be left with a seat a mile from the podium, I resentfully felt forced to join in on the frenzy. Not that it did much good; the next day "my" seat was taken when I walked in. Which in turn forced a chain reaction of seat stealing and evil eyes. I guess it's a symptom of having all your classes in the same room, you tend to develop a "home" space. I find myself getting caught up in it, too, like there's some unspoken seating chart and it's taboo to break it. It's a very weird dynamic that I'd never encountered in undergrad.

On the first day, we dove right into our dissection lab, where I got to meet my group's dog. He's an unneutered, bulky, brindle pit bull mix. He has proved to be quite a difficult dissection, because a lot of that bulk of his is excess skin and fat. Because of that, when we were looking for an 'L' name (our dissection group is decided by last names and we're all Ls) we came up, affectionately of course, with Lucifer.

The professors for all of the classes are very interesting so far, though I'll have a lot more to get used to, as all the classes are team-taught. My favorite would have to be our canine anatomy professor, Dr. Inpanbutr. She's an older Thai woman who's refreshingly hilarious. Hopefully I'll be able to collect some charming quotes from her throughout the quarter to share with you guys.

There's not much else I can think of that would be interesting for you guys. It really is mostly just me sitting in the same room with the same people for hours at a time, eating lunch, and then going back to the same room for hours at a time, with perhaps a brief field trip to the lab. I still haven't gotten to know any of the people well enough to have gossip, but just give it some time, I'm sure there'll be some.

Now I've got to go put together my anatomy flash cards. Fun weekend!