Hey everyone! My name is Arianne and I’m a 4th year vet student. Wow. Fourth year, it’s such a surreal concept to believe that I am finally in my clinical/final year. Time to pull up the big girl pants: the real show now begins. 

As you may already know, final year vet students at OVC must complete an 8-week externship at a mixed animal clinic, which can be anywhere of their choosing. For me, I wanted to choose a clinic that would be able to provide me with the best possible experience and allow for the greatest amount of growth, but that can be hard to determine unless someone has already been there before. So for myself, I chose to focus on taking advantage of this opportunity and trying to get experience in another country to broaden my horizons and see how vet med is practiced with different cultural influences. Exotic animal medicine also has a place near and dear to my heart, which led me to Australia. Australia is known for being absolutely beautiful (as well as being known as the country where every little thing can kill you, but that's beside the point). When I think exotics, I think Australia, and while spending eight weeks at a mixed animal clinic, aka large (cows, horses, etc) and small (dogs and cats), I decided Australia would be the best place to see some exotic wildlife and pets.

That being said, I chose to do my externship at the Manly Road Veterinary Hospital in Brisbane, Australia. Being a clinic that is open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, I'm sure there will be loads of cases, which is both nerve wracking and exciting. My main goal is to be able to get used to thinking in a clinical mindset; being able to put together all the pieces of information from the clinical signs to the physical exam to the diagnostics, and to be able to work together with the vets to develop a treatment plan. I'm hoping to put into practice all of the things that I have learned thus far,  put to use the vast amounts of information that has been pounded into my brain over the last three years and by doing this, hopefully facilitating long term memory as well. 

And with that, let's get this show on the road! Thank you for your support and (hopefully) continual following of my externship adventures as I blog week to week!