Next year. Next year's gonna be different.

At the beginning of this year, I made a vow to myself. A vow that I would study early and never let my school work pile up. I would study well in advance of my exams, recopy all my notes and do all the readings.

I also vowed to eat healthy and excercise regularly. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, the damned dryer in my building has been shrinking my clothes again and I swear my bathroom scale is broken as it says I've gained five pounds (but surely cookies and coffee is the breakfast of champions?).

And so there I was, plowing on through the semmester, unabashedly breaking every vow and every resolution I'd ever made to myself. And before I knew it, I found myself facing the horror they call "final exam week".

Having spent my afternoon wisely (watching TV and making a new mix CD), I decided it was high time I started studying for my first final exam . . . which was at 8:30am the next morning. I looked at my flashing microwave clock. 7:00pm. I had a little over 13 hours.

I flipped open my binder and grudgingly started reading about the lymphoid and hematopoietic system. A few hours, several trips to the fridge and a few e-mail checks later, I was onto my second hand out.

I started reading about the female reproductive system. It was only half a centimeter thick. Not too bad. I read through half of it, decided it was high time I had another snack and decided perhaps I should call Gabe.

Half an hour later, I was still stuck in the female reproductive system hand out and had just finished uteruses but still had severeal pages of ovaries, oviducts, placentas and infectious abortions to go.

I glanced at my microwave again. 11:00pm. I had limited time left. I studied a few more pages and had just gotten onto "fungal infections of the fetus" when I felt it was awfully cold so I went to my room and grabbed a blanket to throw over myself.

All warm and snuggly, I continued to study but the words were swimming in front of my eyes and I found myself reading "Listeria causes multifocal hepatic necrosis in the fetus" over and over and over.

The sentence blurred into darkness.




I woke up with a start. "Where am I?"

I rubbed my eyes and realised I was still at my desk. I looked down. I was still on fungus and fetuses. "Listeria causes multifocal hepatic necrosis in the fetus". I turned around to check how long I'd been asleep.

I gaped at my clock. It was 4 in the morning.

"OH SH*T!!!!!" SH*T! SH*T! SH*T!!!!!!!!!"

It was four and half hours till my exam . . . and I was still on FREAKING FUNGUS AND FETUSES!!!!!

I flipped through the rest of my notes. I was only my second hand out. My second of TWELVE handouts. I didn't give myself time to beat myself up. Instead, I plugged in my kettle, chugged two cups of coffee in quick sucsession and started studying like a mad woman.

By 4:30am, I was done the female reproductive system and starting on the male reproductive system.

By 5:15am, I'd learned all I could about testes, prepuces, and prostate glands.

At 5:37am, I'd finished learning about mammary glands.

I rushed onto the pathology of the skin. Blisters, pustules, feline acne and canine flea bite hypersensitivities were crammed into my overwhelmed brain.

I chugged another cofee and as I watched the sun rise, I was starting on the muscle system and learning about "black leg", "mulberry heart disease" and selenium definiciencies.

The birds began chirping outside my window as I flipped my way through the pathology of bones, then joints and by 7am, I was well into learning everything that can go wrong with a cat's vertebral column.

At 8am, I realised time was of the essence. I could either walk to school and waste 10 minutes or I could take that 10 minutes, quickly run through ten pages of opthamology and drive myself to school despite the risk of getting a ticket.

I decided another coffee was in order and went through glaucoma, uveitis, keratoconjuctivitis and cataracts by exactly 8:20am at which time I swabbed some deodorant under my arms, pulled on the first outfit I found and literally bolted out the door.

I pulled up in the school parking lot, parked with a screech of my brakes and sprinted across the little hill towards the animal hospital door. "RUN VIVIAN RUN!" I heard someone shouting.

It was Cheri, another girl from my class who was taking her sweet time walking to the door with her coffee. "HURRY CHERI!" I shouted at her. "WE'RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT!"

I guess my urgency inspired her and she ran for it too and together, we made it to the classroom with 2 minutes to spare.

I sat down beside Kristen and realised that maybe all that coffee wasn't such a good idea. "you're going to be OK." she said comfortingly. I smiled weakly and was literally twitching in my seat.

I tried to refill the lead in my pencil in an attempt to calm myself but I was shaking so badly I couldn't even get the eraser off the end. The guy beside me started laughing at me and I studiously ignored him. I practiced breathing excercises and with all my effort, managed to get a piece of lead into my pencil.

"You may now begin!" I heard my prof yell from the front of the theatre.



Two hours later, I was finally on the last question. "What lesion does Listeria cause?"

My head was swimming with caffeine, adrenalin and lack of sleep. Somewhere in there, I knew I had the answer.

And then it hit me.

"Listeria causes multifocal hepatic necrosis in the fetus"

I slammed down my pencil triumphantly and handed in my test.


One down.

Five more to go.

And I've just wasted more time blogging.

Next year. Next year's gonna be different. I'll study early next year, I'll keep up and I'll do all my readings and, and, and . . .