Rebecca Pocock
Rebecca Pocock
Contact details
- email rpocock@rvc.ac.uk
About me
I am a mature American BVetMed student just finished with my second year at the Royal Vet College. Originally from North Carolina, I spent about five years in Virginia before coming to London. I hold a Bachelors of Arts in Religion and in a previous life I counselled secondary school students (who are now older than my classmates!) for a nonprofit organization. My favorite place in the world is Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, and the thing I miss the most about America is my 21-year-old TB gelding, Southern Gourmet.
What I hope to get out of this project
Leading a team of students and coordinating with Nottingham Vet School has proved to be challenging, exciting and interesting. I hope that the Wiki project will serve students in their studies for years to come, and look forward to watching it evolve over the next stage of its life.
My best learning experience in the past
At my undergraduate university, Davidson College, I was taught to think outside the box through dialogue and discussion with classmates and professors. I was encouraged to take initiative with my questions and dig until I could fully grasp new concepts. One of the things I miss most about Davidson is the sense of collaboration and mutual learning - the idea that two heads really are better than one - and it's something I've found very satisfying about working on the Wiki project.
Curriculum area that interests me
I thoroughly enjoyed the brief stint of lectures we received on Immunology this year, and would love to be able to take that learning further in the course of the next few years. I find it incredible to consider the myriad of ways our bodies (and our animals') can cope with the number of things that assault them on a daily basis, and I'm totally intrigued in figuring out how and why parts of those defenses can go wrong. I look forward to figuring out how to fix them!
Topics that are difficult
Biochemistry might be the bane of my existence, but I'm coming to appreciate how crucial it is to understand it. Hopefully one day it will seem easier to remember than it does now!
Day one thoughts
What (three things) I learn't today
- I spell "learn't" 'learned'
- This is actually something closer to day 40 for me
- How to put up an external link to an image - very exciting
What I still need to learn
All the anatomy I'm writing about!
Three weeks into the wikivet project (or thereabouts)
Sections I've been working on
- Musculoskeletal System - Anatomy & Physiology
- General editing of RVC contributors
What I feel I've gained so far from being involved in the project
- A better sense of the structures in the domestic species
- Leadership has to be adaptable
- I am so not as technologically capable as the team I'm supposedly in charge of
Problems or issues that I've had or can forsee
- Communication with Nottingham needs to be more regulated - on our end and theirs
- Working in the summer means juggling holiday schedules, but working during the year will compete with study time
- Putting in pathology information before general anatomy may not have been the smartest move
- Topics naturally repeat and must be condensed
- Naming pages has become a bit of a beast
- The pathology pages were not edited and are now proving less than satisfactory in some cases
My suggestions for improving the way the project works for the future
- Use final year students to edit these pages - particularly the pathology pages
- Have a student coordinator AND a faculty coordinator at other schools who can successfully round students up and hold them to a certain standard
- Train students on image use - copyrights, where to find available images, etc.
What involvement (if any!) I would like to have with the project in the future
- I'd like to see the Anatomy sections come together in a way that's meaningful and useful to students in years behind us, so I'll do my best to see that through!