Hey everyone,

I’m Aaron Couch, a current Student Ambassador at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture. I’m here to talk about, answer questions, and just show you a little bit of what college life is like here at NCTA in Curtis, Nebraska. But if you want the whole story… you’ll have to come check it out for yourself. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

So who am I? I grew up in Bennington, NE which is about fifteen minutes from Omaha, but it seems to be getting closer every time I travel back. I am currently pursuing a Veterinary Assistant Associates degree and plan to complete my Internship this summer and graduate in August. I stay pretty busy with twenty-one credit hours, working as a Resident Assistant in the Men’s Resident Hall and as a Student Ambassador giving tours, making phone calls, and staying in touch with prospective students, like YOU. I have interests in exotics (reptiles, amphibians, etc), computers, paintballing and basketball. I pretty much enjoy any outdoor activity, whether it’s camping, football or climbing a mountain.

So what’s new on campus? Well lately I’ve been noticing kids playing sand volleyball every Wednesday night, unfortunately I’ve been busy enough to not be able to play, but I plan on it sometime. Tours are picking up again and getting quite busy. Unlike many other colleges they are offered every day 9-5 so it works with your schedule!
If you are interested in any more information you can contact me by email: aaron.r.couch@gmail.com or look me up on Facebook (arc2007@hotmail.com is the email registered with my account – also works with Windows Live). I’ll do my best to help you out and answer any questions you may have.

See you next fall!

Aaron

Back in Business

The Aggie Blogs are back! Mr. Aaron Couch will return as our senior Aggie blogger. Also, stayed tuned for upcoming blogs from 2 brand new Aggies. We might even have some faculty blogging. The new blogs will up and running by February 10th! Welcome to Aggieland!

Mr. Aaron Couch

Hey everyone welcome to the spring edition of the aggie blog by me, Aaron Couch! This spring has been pretty exciting. Intramural basketball has started and it is a blast – although my team has yet to win a game we have a lot of fun just messin’ around and havin’ a good time with friends. Other activities such as dances and about nine basketball games a week keep the students busy and energetic!

As far as classes go they are going great for me. Mid-terms have come and gone which is crazy how fast this year has been going by. It seems like yesterday I was packing to go home for spring break – which was a ton of fun by the way; there’s nothin’ better than a nice 9 day vacation from school! But school is great, friends are great, and for the most part I like my classes. The labs are always the best part. Right now in a class called “Fur & Feather” we all are assigned project rats and have to take care of them and chart down how they are doing every day. Another class called “Production Animals” we are currently rotating cattle through the chutes and getting used to the pneumatic system, which is fun too. There’s a lot of surgery going on right now that many of the second year students are involved in. From the looks of it they are keeping their hands pretty full and workin’ some pretty long hours, but I can’t wait for that experience too!

Work is another thing that is keeping me fairly busy maintaining the machine at Frontier Technologies. It has really been a great experience and future work with them looks very promising also! There is actually a pretty neat presentation going on with it tomorrow Friday the 4^th that will show more of what the machine can do. I am learning new things with it every day and am always excited to learn more and do more!

Overall this spring has been nothing busy and fun – from playing basketball to even working I enjoy every part of Curtis and don’t plan on leaving anytime soon! Hope you all enjoyed this blog! Stay tuned for other upcoming blogs by Vanessa, Sarah, and I!

Stay cool

Aaron

My Vet Tech Experience

Wow, the first semester sure has flow on by. I am back from Christmas break and it feels like I’ve never left. Now I am faced with the challenge of an entire new class schedule. I’m in my final semester at NCTA and now it’s crunch time. I need to choose and than apply for my internship, and then I need to sign-up to take the National Board Exam. It seems like my life is stuck in fast forward mode right now and I just want everything to slow down so I can create everlasting friendships and memories at NCTA.

I am very excited to finally start my Surgery Prep class. I have been looking forward to this class ever since my first day at NCTA. Right now we are learning how to properly set up surgical packs and “scrub in” for surgery just like in Grey’s Anatomy. Scrubbing in is really fun, it seems so unreal that we get to scrub in for an actual surgery. During this semester each student will be assigned to either by the anesthetic tech, prep tech, surgical assistant tech, recovery tech, or circulating tech. We will rotate jobs each surgery. We will assist Veterinarian and teacher, Dr. Barnes as she performs routine spays and neuters. It will be an awesome experience that I can not wait to take part in. This class is preparing us for our eight week internships this upcoming summer.

Oh and I can not forget that I need to begin studying for my Exit Exams, which I keep putting off. Exit Exams is one week with a series of test over every Veterinary Technician class that I have taken. These tests will prove that I am ready to take the National Board Exam.

This semester is full of great hands on opportunities that I am so glad that I get to be apart of. Well that is all for now and I hope you have a great February.

-Sara

NCTA Veterinary Technology Program

Vanessa's New Year

Another New Year begins... And another new semester at NCTA. This semester is a big one. Mucho Importante! In another four months, I will be saying goodbye to my NCTA roots. Then I will be starting life in the real world. Well first I must start life in the real world with an Internship, it is a requirement. This should be an exciting opportunity for me. This is when I put all my skills and knowledge to the test. But I best quit day-dreaming of the future and realize that I must keep up with studying first.

On Monday we started Intramural Volleyball. It’s a lot of fun. I love to participate in the intramural sports offered here. It’s an opportunity to hang out with friends and having fun with a competitive sport. Of course our team won! It rocked. We will play again next Monday.

This weekend I am heading home to see family. I am not looking forward to the drive. But once I arrive home, and mom has dinner waiting, it will all be worth it. Plus I am looking forward to seeing the movie “27 Dresses” with a couple of friends.

Until next time. Chao Bella!

Welcome Bloggers! New Official Aggie Blog Site

Hey, welcome to our brand new Aggie Blog site! I hope our readers will find this site much more user friendly. We have 3 great bloggers now, and we might add a couple more in the near future.....so stay tuned! I would also encourage our readers to comment on our blogs posted by our students. You couldn't do that on the old one. (I bet you knew that) Have a good one!

Check out the Aggie Minute Podcasts too!

TTYL

Cooper

Aaron's New Year

Hello again!

It’s a new year! With new classes and even some new people it has been really exciting. The three week break we got off for the holidays was quite refreshing! I got to see my friends back home and even went to Florida with my girlfriend for a week so that was nice. But when I was away from Curtis I realized that I missed my friends back here just as much as I did the ones from Omaha.

There are quite a few fun classes this semester including the class Fur and Feathers which is one of my favorites, but it’s not for everyone even though everyone still needs to take it. It introduces you to the rodents, birds, and other exotics such as reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids. I find it very interesting and fun to learn about them, so if you’re like me that is one class you can look forward to when you come here. NCTA has an excellent exotics room and we are constantly adding more to it. Like I mentioned in my last blog they happen to be a strength of mine! Another class that allows you to interact a lot with the animals is the class called Facility Management. For the most part you take care of everything that concerns the animals on campus – sounds overwhelming, but with the right people you can have fun while you work. The class consists of maintaining all the animal facilities, feeding them, exercising them, etc.

Another new thing starting this semester for me is working at Frontier Technologies, a company on campus. They right now have a very high tech machine that is one of a kind in the world. No where else is there anything like it, but in a small rural town in western Nebraska, called Curtis! This machine is amazing, high tech, and way out of my realm of knowledge, but I will do my best to describe it to you. It is a machine that uses Ultrasound waves and sees only flesh (ligaments, tendons, and skin). It not only can see through skin, but see it as well which I think is amazing. This is very commonly used for mammograms and within the next year will be in nearly every human hospital in the nation. I currently just do some low maintenance stuff on it, like keeping the water clean in it for example. But sometime in the next month I will be getting trained on the machine and learning much more about it. Like I said right now I am still learning about it, but the best way to learn about it is to stop by and take a look! It is really a magnificent machine and will change the age of health and science.

We have intramural volleyball this semester and hopefully some basketball too! It sounds like it will be a blast and everyone can play of course! There is always something going on here, you just have to look for it!

Thanks for considering NCTA if you have any further questions you can email me at the link at the bottom of the page! Thanks again!

-Aaron

Sara's December Blog

Hey everyone, I hope you had a Happy Halloween and Thanksgiving. The Vet-Tech Club, STVMA, which I am a member of, hosted a Costume Halloween Dance. It was fun to see what creative ideas everyone came up with. Labs have been a blast the past few weeks. In Anesthesiology my lab group monitored patients under anesthesia, while other students performed dentals. On Thursday I will actually get to perform the dental, while another lab group monitors the anesthesia. I am pretty excited about this because we have learned so much about dentals, and now I finally get to incorporate this in a real life situation. Just last week in my small animal nursing lab we were practicing casting techniques on each other. I got to plaster a cast on my lab partner, and she did the same to me. I have never broken an arm before, so having a cast was an exciting new experience for me.

I have been really busy studying because the end of the semester is getting so close. The annual Winter Formal is almost here, so that should be able to give me a break from studying for just a little bit. Finals are just around the corner, and I am starting to get a little nervous. Now is the time for me to prove what I have learned all semester, and that is a lot of information and procedures. Well I better get back to studying! Have a Merry Christmas a Happy New Year.

Vanessa's December Blog

Today was a very exciting lab day. The nursing and anesthesia labs were combined; some students were monitoring the patient under anesthesia while other students were practicing their dental skills. Everything went smoothly with our patient, which is always a plus!

Countdown to Winter Break Begins. And I can't wait to head home. Thanksgiving break was quite enjoyable, especially with all of grandmother's fixings. But I am really thrilled to spend time working at the vet clinic. I truly benefit from applying what I have learned in classes to the real world.

Unfortunately, the sooner Winter Break comes, the sooner I will be taking finals. With all my efforts of studying, I must find time to unwind. This week's unwinding time was spent having dinner and a movie night. Last night my friends and I went to the Legion Hall to eat dinner then rented the movie "Vacancy". Tomorrow we PTK members are hosting a Winter Snowball Formal. I will be there to help setup for the dance, as well as help photograph for the formal pictures. It should be a blast. I also plan on spending some time at the local gym, Frontier Family Fitness Center. Then it's back to studying for this week's exams.

Wish me the best of luck! Talk to you soon!

-Vanessa

Sara's September Blog

My name is Sara and I am a Student Ambassador at NCTA. I am now in my second year majoring as a Veterinary Technician. I graduated from a relatively small high school, with fifty-three students in my graduating class. I have lived in Kearney, Nebraska my entire life until I moved to Curtis last year to start college. It seems like just yesterday was freshmen orientation and move-in day. Campus has been very active with activities almost every week since then. On move-in day there was already a Street Dance in front of Ag Hall. If you don't know how to swing-dance before you attend Curtis, you will before you leave. That weekend the Curtis Cattle Company also hosted a Karaoke and Dancing Night for NCTA students. Since move-in day there has been a number of other activities: bonfires, Curtis Fall Festival, rodeos, and NCTA Games.

One of my favorite activities was mud football. Letting loose and getting down and dirty was a great stress reliever after a hectic week of classes. The Curtis Fire Department was there to hose down the field causing it to reach maximum mud levels. The Fire Department also hosed everyone off at the end. The water was freezing cold and it only took a few hours to get all of the mud out of my hair. Yet, it was totally worth it. October 15th through October 19th was Veterinary Technician week. Every day was a dress up day and the Veterinarian Technician students were encouraged to participate. My two favorite days were, black-out Wednesday and Pajama Friday. The past few months have been very busy and just flown on by.

Vanessa's October Blog

Hello! My name is Vanessa. I am from Lincoln, NE. I graduated from Lincoln High School. Before coming to NCTA, I worked at Nebraska Animal Medical Center. I have a strong love for animals, that's why my future career will be spent around them. I am a second year in the Veterinary Technology program here at NCTA. Along with my busy schedule, I am the secretary in STVMA a.k.a. "Vet Tech Club". I also work as a student ambassador on campus. I just finished midterms last week. After such a crazy week of studying for tests, I was in need of rest, thank goodness for fall break. School keeps me very busy, and classes are going great. This week in lab classes we went through the internal anatomy of the horse for Necropsy. In Nursing lab we learned CPR techniques for dogs and cats.
I am excited for the end of month to come because STVMA is hosting the Halloween Dance. I have been putting a lot of work and effort into getting the dance up and going, now I can't wait to see the final results. Things should be fun!

Well back to classes. Until next time, have a good November. I am just thinking about grandma's home cooking for Thanksgiving! Adios!

-Vanessa

Aaron's September Blog

Hey guys my name is Aaron. I'm a first year Vet Tech student here at NCTA. I play basketball here and we have our first game November 5^th. I'm pretty pumped and can't wait. I also participate in the Safari Club and the STVMA club, which is a club that all Vet Tech students are in. The Safari Club is a club that focuses on exotics. We will take field trips to different places and study the life of animals that are not so domestic. As a matter of fact the second year members will be visiting Costa Rica this December. There is really no limit what you get to do in this club, which is why I really enjoy it.

I decided to come to NCTA because of the small college, classes, and town atmosphere. Because I come from a small town myself it definitely wasn't a change at all. Which now that I think about it, you're probably thinking where is this kid from? I'm from Bennington, Nebraska - a small suburb of Omaha. Yeah I'm somewhat a city kid, but I'm not afraid to get dirty and have fun, which is what Curtis is all about! If you have any other questions you can email me acouch1@bigred.unl.edu

Hope to see you here!

Aaron