In My Car (I’ll Be The Driver)

Yesterday was, not only the deadline for my chemistry Individual Investigation, but it was also the day of my practical driving test. I had to wake up at 6am in time for my test but this was probably that worst part of the day. After getting over my initial nerves (causing my feet to shake, which wasn’t very helpful!), the test went a lot better than I expected and I passed with only 3 minors!

My instructor told me that I was “in no condition to be driving” (I was too excited), so he drove me to college where there were quite a few very anxious looking chemistry students who hadn’t quite finished their investigations yet!

Now that I have handed it in, it seems like I have very little work to do (am I tempting fate?), so I’ve had a relaxing day. This evening was also the first time I’ve driven anywhere on my own – to Wildlife Aid, which is getting much quieter now in these autumn months.

A more common sight at Wildlife Aid

Friends Will Be Friends

I’ve had such a busy summer that I’ve hardly had any time to catch up with any of my friends other than through postcards! Last Monday was my Progression Day at college, where we met with our tutors to talk about what we are going to do next year. Because my college is so big, there are three Progression Days and I didn’t get to see any of my friends then. Instead the next day I met up with Kat in Kingston and later in the week I had Natasha over to watch some movies (Titanic and A Cinderella Story) and this week I went to the cinema with Nick to see Wall-e.

This week was my first full week back at college and it was really good to be back and see everyone again. Other than a new chemistry teacher, Emma, all my teachers are the same, but I have a much better timetable! I expect Thursdays will be very relaxing as I don’t have to be in college until 1:50pm, although I’m sure that I’ll have plenty of work to be doing!

The White Rider

I’ve never understood when people talk about horse riding as a sport before - until this week. It turns out you don’t just sit there while the horse does all the work! I’ve spent this last week on the Isle of Wight, learning about horses (husbandry as well as riding).

Jack and Mushroom

I got to meet a blacksmith and watch him working with the horses for a day. He explained some of the common problems that he has to deal with, and what he does when he encounters them. I was surprised how vast his knowledge had to be, of everything relating to horses, in order to treat problems with their hooves.

Having had almost no experience with horses I was surprised at how quickly my confidence grew in the week. By the last day I could tack up a horse and ride confidently (even bareback), although my legs paid the price, by understanding all too well that horse riding really is a sport.

Me and Fairy

In between this, I spent most of my time in Cowes as it was Cowes Week – a major event in the sailing calendar – and the last two night of the week I camped with my family on a campsite near the beach to see the air displays and fireworks signalling the end of the week.

Milkcow Blues

I’ve spent the last week working on a dairy farm in Somerset. I’d never done any work with cows before (except briefly when I spent a week on a sheep farm) so it was a new experience for me. What I didn’t realise until arriving there the night before was that the farm was only a couple of hundred metres down the road from the self-catered accommodation I was staying in – which meant that I didn’t have to wake up ages before my 6am start every morning – so my routine every day was something like this:

5:30am - Wake up, eat breakfast, put on my boiler suit and wellies (in the photo below)

5:50am – Walk along to the farm

6:00am – Go to the field the cows were in and bring them up to the farm buildings

6:15am – Start milking

8:15am – Finish milking, give the milk to the calves

8:30am – Walk back to accommodation, get out of now very smelly/dirty boiler outfit

*Free time*

[Working on chemistry coursework/summer college work or relaxing]

3:30pm – Put my boiler suit back on and walk back to the farm

4:00-6:30pm – same as 6:00-8:30am

The farm had 130 milking cows which were all milked twice a day so by the end of the week I had become quite quick at attaching and removing the milking clusters, a 10 step process:

1. Let the cows in one at a time onto the platforms
2. Chain them in so that they don’t walk away
3. Give them some food
4. Check (from their markings) if they have mastitis or are only milking on 3 quarters*
5. Wash away and dirt from the udders
6. Wipe the udders
7. Attach the cluster and turn on the vacuum
8. Once the milk flow has reduced, remove the cluster
9. Spray the udder with disinfectant to help prevent infection
10. Open the door for the cow to leave

*Milk from the cows with mastitis has to be kept separate from the other milk and cannot be sold. Some cows which have had mastitis have ‘dryed up’ in one of their quarters, so only 3 of the 4 cups on the cluster are attached.

 

Despite the early mornings, I really enjoyed the week and now feel confident working with cows, which was what I was aiming for from the week.

Let’s Get Away From It All

In the evening after our last offical day of college, I went with some of my friends into London to the musical Wicked. A couple of them had already seen it before and really enjoyed it and I Ioved it too. I had already heard the soundtrack but still was suprised at some of the twists of the story.

The next day was the 17th birthday party of Nick – one of my old school friends. It was fancy-dress (the theme was rockstars and groupies) and there was variable amount of effort put into the outfits!

The next morning I went to Cornwall with Nick and his family. We stayed the week in a static caravan and I learnt a lot while we were there; how to surf, how to blokart, 2 chords on the guitar and that it’s far too easy to roll out of narrow caravan beds!

The bay at St. Ives

Do It Again

My last week of college as a 6.1 student was spent doing the practical part of my chemistry individual investigation. Mine is on urease and the hydrolysis of urea. All week I repeated the same experiment (which lasted about 15 minutes) – needless to say, by the end of the week I’d done it enough times to not want to do it again!

In December I attended VetMed-Link and during this last week I was on a similar course, Vetsim. It was also tiring because it was so intensive but it was also quite different – it was much more hands-on, with practical simulations as well as live animal sessions.

Photograph

Here are some of the photos from my last few weeks:

Wildlife Aid

 

Wildlife Heritage Foundation

 

 London Zoo

 

End of Year Party

Long Time Gone (Part 3)

In the last few weeks, my dance teachers have started a beginner’s class in ballroom dancing before the lesson I go to, and my friends and I help out at. Because it’s at a lower level than what we dance at, it’s useful for bringing up the standard of my dancing when I am doing the man’s steps.

I am continuing my driving lessons and also learning the theory from my DSA beginner pack DVDs. Each weekend I go out to Chertsey (where I will have my test) with my dad to go round some of the possible test routes

There was a first for me last week at Wildlife Aid, bats! There were three baby bats (which had to be fed every hour) and one older one. The babies were pipette fed esbilac and the older one got a delicious meal of headless mealworms (still moving!).

Twice in the past few weeks I volenteered at Wildlife Heritage Foundation. The highlight of both days was feeding some of the tigers chicken legs!

Last night was my college’s 6.1 end of year party. It was lots of fun and a couple of my friends from my old school came with me but I am now very tired. It finished at 1am and by the time we had taken the night bus halfway home (it didn’t go any further) and walked the rest of the way it was about 2am when we got back to my house and 2:30 when we got to sleep. I was up early to be at Beech House Vets today so I got about 4 hours sleep!

Long Time Gone (Part 2)

I am still going to Cobham Park Veterinary Clinic every week. A number of times animals have been brought in to have x-rays for various reasons and I helped the nurses to position them and develop the films. Also, a chocolate Labrador that was believed to be pregnant had an ultrasound scan. It turned out that she was pregnant and is due to have 5 puppies later in the year.

Another Vets has also allowed me to start doing work experience with them each week. Beech House Veterinary Centre has 4 branches that the vets circulate around. I go to the main branch so there are always a few vets there at any time and plenty happening. In the weeks that I have been there I have got to see lots including;

• A number of neuterings (spays and castrations)
• A cruciate ligament repair
• Dentals on rabbits and dogs – on of the rabbits had a tooth abscess which had to be removed
• A cat and a dog which had both (at different times) been in RTAs – the cat was very lucky and other than being in shock and a few cuts was fine, but all of the dog’s front teeth had been hit and had to be removed and had some quite bad bruising
• Two ferrets having a check up
• A guinea pig with fur loss
• On of the vets, Charlie, putting air bubbles into a pig’s eye that he got from the butchers and then syringing them out again to practice for an operation to remove some fatty lumps from a dog’s iris
• A dog with swollen anal glands
• A young dog which had eaten some lead and was given lots of food and laxatives to pass it through its system
• A dogue de bourdeux puppy with a bite wound to its ear which had become infected
• A few different tumour removals
• A cat that had its tail bitten in a fight
• A kitten having its first vaccination
• A dewclaw removal because the dog kept catching them on things and in the last year had broken one of them three times

When there are no operations or consultations to watch, Ros the Head Nurse always finds things for me to do; I help out with the cleaning, have taken out IV catheters, help to restrain animals and feed patients in the kennels.

Long Time Gone (Part 1)

I know that I haven’t posted in over a month, but I have a three recap posts coming up of everything that I’ve been up to…

My mum is involved with lots of different charities including ISS UK. In May they had their annual Spring Fair, and I went along to help sell raffle tickets.

On the 15th May, it was one of my friends birthday so on my way to college I dropped off her present (a DBSK album) at her house before going to my second exam – the physics practical. In the weeks since then, I have finished all of my exams – Statistics, Physics (x2), Core 3 (Maths), Mechanics, Biology, Chemistry and Further Pure 1 (Maths).

Now that exams are over we are back at college to start next year’s work before breaking up for summer in July. Because I wanted to reduce my workload next year (I took 5 subjects at AS Level) to focus on fewer subjects I am not carrying on Physics to A2 level. In Maths (and Further Maths) we are starting the next modules; C4, M2 and FP2. We are now starting our Individual Investigations for Chemistry and mine is on urease and the hydrolysis of urea. The next unit for Biology is the two topics; ‘On the wild side’ and ‘Infection, immunity and forensics’ and to learn about taxonomy, last week, we went on a visit to London Zoo.