Long Reflection

I remember when I first heard about this trip the ideas that came to me and the “what if’s” that I was drawing up in my head. Reflecting back to before the trip, I was excited and a bit nervous. It would not be the first time I had meet Europeans right? True but, never before had I meet and spent time with Europeans in association with my field of study. That was a bit nerve racking. However, as it turned out, my nervousness was a bit over exaggerated because turns out they are just like us… well a younger version of us sometimes. So yes I did get to know them on a professional, veterinary student to veterinary student, level. There was so much more to our interactions. It really was a beautiful thing. This is what I enjoyed most about our trip.

For me that relationship is what is important. I will be working with the students in the future; frankly, because our industry is not all that big. That does bring me to an interesting point. Their classes are huge! Interestingly though, their overall class structures are very similar. Take basics first, then your more detailed classes, then learn diseases, then medicine and last learn about clinics. The structure of classes is similar as well, the large sum of students are split into many smaller groups which then take different aspects of different classes. Not once did someone mention huge classrooms and classroom sizes which is impressive with class totals reaching above 300 per year and they have 6 years. That is another big difference. There it seemed there was a whole lot more students teaching students. I imagine that is because the students outnumber the faculty to a much larger degree than here in the states.

The other difference I would like to mention is their lack of organizations. They do not have all these organizations like we do, they have a few but even they are not the same. Their main one is like SCAVMA for us. They give them a room at the school to relax in and things like that. But, to be frank, it seemed more like a fraternity than a school organization. Don’t get me wrong, what they did sounded awesome and a huge deal of fun… but not academic related. I am not saying this is a bad thing, much the opposite; this was kind of a structured outlet for the students. It is fantastic idea in fact. However, I did notice that the biggest complaint the students had was their lack of actual hands on experience. They may get to see many things and read many books about those things but, they seldom actually get to do them. This is similar at schools here in the states, it is simply a liability issue. The hospitals have clients and have to make some money to keep the doors open, students cause a certain liability that can be a problem at times. However, here we solve this problem by providing the students with countless out of class activities to make up for this. The clubs we have set these events up, run them and often fund them all separate for the school administration. To me this is the most substantial difference between our two education systems.