Merry Kroeger, Texas A&M University

Life as a Vet Student, Entry

Over the course of my last 2 years, I have made some fond memories in veterinary school. During my second semester as a first year student, I had to take 6 hours of large animal anatomy. We were put into groups of 6 to 7 per cadaver horse for lab. One of my newest friends, Ashley, was put in my lab group. All semester we had a blast dissecting our horse. On one occasion, I had wandered over to look at some radiographs on the wall of the equine limb, and Ashley came up behind and scared me. It surprised me so much I screamed, and then jumped. I think a majority of the lab heard my racket because when I turned around to see who had scared me, not only was Ashley there laughing, but half the lab was looking my way. They were probably wondering why I had screamed and why Ashley was laughing. I have never be so scared out of my wits like I had that day. And to this day, Ashley still teases me about the pause between when I screamed and when I jumped, because in her head, she cannot understand why a person would jump AFTER they screamed, instead of screaming and jumping at the same time! I guess I am a bit unusual.

A fond memory during first year was Hawaiian Friday. One of our microbiology professors had a routine of dressing every Friday in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sandals. Not kidding. And so, one of my classmates had the clever idea of emailing the entire class and coordinating a Friday in which we would wear Hawaiian shirts in spirit of Dr. Musser's Hawaiian Friday. This resulted in about 20-30 students showing up for Friday classes in Hawaiian shirts and making Dr. Musser gleefully excited. Our class historian recruited some of the students to stay after class and pose for a picture with Dr. Musser as a capturing memory of a fun day.