Finished First Year of Vet School

I am officially done my first year of vet school (pending completion of three placements this summer and passing my Animal Body 4 exams).

My written exam was Tuesday of last week.  Wednesday I had my oral exam.  It was 15 minutes, consisting of 7.5 minutes of discussing physiology and 7.5 minutes pointing out anatomy structures on a fully dissected cow.  It was very stressful but I am cautiously optimistic that it went fairly well.

Wednesday afternoon I started moving into my new flat.  I am moving in with another GEP vet student from California.  We moved less than five minutes away from our previous flat, which made moving a little easier.  What made moving less fun was the fact that we were moving from a flat on the 4^th floor of a building to our new flat which is also on the 4^th floor.  I didn’t feel guilty for not going to the gym Wednesday!  I definitely got my fair share of stairs.

I also realized I never put up pictures of my residence flat so here are a couple just prior to moving out. 

My giant Canadian flag provided by a friend from home

View from my window.  Can just see Arthur's Seat on the right in the distance

Finding a flat in Edinburgh was been quite an experience.  I am used to looking for houses at my old university in January for a lease starting in April.  Here it is very different.  Flats turn over so quickly.  You don’t really start looking for a flat more than a month and a half advance at most. 

The first few flats we called about had already been rented by the time we called.  We quickly learned that we would have to be much more proactive.  We started checking every morning.  But that still wasn’t working.  So I managed to set up an account on the main rental sites and it would instantly email me about new properties. 

After a couple of cancelled viewings, we finally got to see a few properties.  We put an application in for one.  But we were rejected because we have the “student” tag associated with us.  So my friend and I got more strategic in selling ourselves.  We no longer were finishing first year, we were entering our clinical years of vet school.  We weren’t 23 and 24 years old, we were 23 and almost 25.  And eventually it worked.  We got a flat!  We were beyond excited.  And it was during our AHWFS handling exams so what a nice stress reliever…. Until they emailed back a few hours later and said that the landlord changed their mind and had decided to take the flat off the market and was going to rent it to family instead.

So back to square one.  We went to see a few more flats.  The one flat, the bathroom was so small you could stand in the middle and touch all four walls with your hands.  We decided against that one.  Then we stumbled across a flat that looked beautiful in the ad.  After the viewing the landlord seemed to really like us.  That evening we got confirmation the flat was ours!  We paid the deposit as fast as we could to make sure we didn’t lose the flat.

Since moving in, we have had painters in the flat everyday fixing windows in my bedroom and the kitchen.  So for the first few nights, we moved all of my stuff into my friend’s room.  It was absolute chaos.  Today the painters aren’t here so I am going to try and get some of my stuff into my dresser and wardrobe so that she can actually walk around her room!  The painters are coming back tomorrow but fingers crossed it is their last day.

Also I am posting this from a Starbucks because until June 11^th we don’t have internet.  Setting up internet here is a big thing that seems to take a long time.  We are changing providers from the previous tenant so they have to come in and set up a new phone line.   And the first available technician timeslot wasn’t until the 11^th.  Guess we are going to be internetless for another week and a half.

Once we get better settled and all the painters equipment is gone I will try and post a few pictures of our new digs.