Small, but perfectly formed.

A couple of days of notes to catch up on...

14.02.12

1. Castrate on a 7m/o little bay Irish Draft fellow. Sedated with dom & torb and injected lignocaine locally around the goolies (testicle, neck, skin of the scrotum). Sterile scrub of the area. Clamped on emasculators for 4mins for blood vessels & another 4 minutes for testicles. Emasculators go on nuts to nuts for first clamp. No trouble, nice and quick. Small, but perfectly formed.

2. Scanned RF tendon on a 20y/o bay connemara. We were hoping for ALDDFT damage as it is simpler to repair, but actually saw a lot of damage to the SDFT. Poor boy was very sore and swollen. 6months of box rest & support bandages to look forward to. Re-scan in 1 month.

3. Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous little Welsh Sec A driving pony. Lateral xrays on both forefeet (I did them!) History of laminitis; concussion from driving may have played a role as not actually that fat for a pony. In Imprint shoes and doing really well. Farrier wanted to see xrays to have an idea of how much he could take off the toe. Was first time I saw Imprints go on; really clever little shoes.

15.02.12

1. Vaccinated another 13hh bay driving pony. Checked heart. More regular than my heartbeat (see below!) Pinch skin of the neck and inject under the skin. Not Proteq as she'd had a bad reaction to that last time.

2. Re-application of Liverpool ointment to a small nodular sarcoid on the right forelimb of a lovely little coloured mare. Job jobbed.

Cut my afternoon short here because unfortunately the funny arrhythmia I'd been experiencing for the last few days got worse and I ended up spending 5 hours in casualty having tests. Yippee. Not dead yet though. Must try harder. I learned was that I am very fit and that I don't have a murmur, electrolyte disturbances or thyroid problems. Woohoo!

Them's my reasons and I'm sticking to them.

Blissed out cat

Because I am a sensible growed-up type of person and I value my career prospects I decided to set off for my first rotations as sleep deprived and unprepared as possible (I woke up this morning after about 4 hours kip and too much dancing next to a totally blissed out cat). It seems to be important for a vet to be able to operate on very little sleep and I felt the need to develop this skill. Them's my reasons and I'm sticking to them. Tomorrow morning at 6am I will reflect upon the decisions I made this week and probably wonder if my reasoning was sound, but that's what hindsight is there for. Week 1 is equine so I figure so intensive anatomy swotting during the vet's morning meeting might be a good plan. Fingers, paws, hooves etc. crossed.

"Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school. 

Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools. 

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted." 

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

(http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/#.Tv4NA-e7HkY.mailto)

This is what I want for education in this country. The rest of the article talks about state and private schools and the author believes that this is the root of the problem. I believe that the root of the problem is the way we are taught and examined; if state schools raised their game then private schools wouldn't have a USP unless they specialised in one particular area. There are five things I would love to see changed about the way children are taught in the UK:

1. Teaching should be well paid, sought-after job with rigorous standards. 
2. No illiterate 'well-I-didn't-know-what-else-to-dos' should be in the crucial role of a teacher. Teachers should be an inspiration.
3. Constant examination stress should be removed.
4. Teaching and assessment should be individualised.
5. Not all students should be encouraged to go to university. Students should be encouraged to do what they want to do or what they are good at. University does not have to come into the equation.