First Week Run-down

So, nothing particularly spectacular happened this week, so I'll just give you a quick run-down of my classes and maybe explain to you some terms I'll likely use a lot (I'll put those in bold so it'll feel like pulling out vocab words from your favorite text book!). Feel free to ask some clarifying questions in comments! Also, I'm dropping a loving happy birthday to my hubby!
Wildlife Education: This class will basically prepare us for doing shows at the zoo. We will learn facts about the animals used in shows, learn how to handle some of the animals, and then actually start doing some show appearances. There's also a lab associated with this class which is basically a repeat of any basic college speech class, but with an animal twist.
Zoo Skills: This class transforms into a phrase: "day watch". Everyone signs up for two hours a week to rotate through various maintenance tasks in the zoo. This includes answering the phones, doing rounds (checking on all the animals), entering data from the daily sheets (sheets of paper kept in each area of the zoo to record temperatures and anything strange or abnormal going on with an animal), taking out the recycling, and a multitude of other things that vary based on the day and time that you have it.
Animal Diversity: This class is somewhat of a repeat of any zoology designated class I had in college. I attempted to skip it, but since I've heard nothing about that, I think it didn't work. We'll go through all of the groups of animals and their various characteristics. In the lab section of this course, we are memorizing approximately 300 species names of animals (about 20 a week) as well as a few other taxon groupings for those specific animals. We also watch videos. Not sure how interesting or boring those are since the one we were supposed to watch this week didn't happen due to too much pointless question asking.
Wildlife Conservation: This class seems pretty awesome. We are basically just going to cover the concepts of conservation while also discussing new techniques and hot topics. There will also be lots of cool guest speakers from the world of conservation.
Animal Care and Handling: Here we are learning how to do all the work around the zoo. Cleaning, feeding, and even a bit of handling are all covered. The lab section of this course is code named "area". This is the class that causes me to be at the zoo at 6:30am three days a week, and coming in on weekends. Right now, we're just walking around hearing about what we'll do, but soon, we will actually start working. This lab also happens in the afternoon. This is the time that animals are checked in on first thing when we get there and last thing when we leave, and so much more.
Animal Health and Safety: This class is taught by our on site vet. She's super awesome! She is basically in charge of the logistics of the California condor conservation project! In here we're going to learn about how to keep ourselves safe when working in this zoo environment, as well as how to keep the animals safe and healthy. We'll learn a lot about general exotic animal husbandry, and also cover a large section at the end over zoonotic diseases (diseases communicable between animals and people).
Avian and Reptile Care: This class is covering very basic husbandry and vet skills for birds and reptiles/amphibians. It will have lots of guest speakers from the LA zoo.
That's what my weeks are looking like pretty much! I also have to squeeze in twelve hours of volunteer time over the course of the semester, but that won't be hard. Hopefully that wasn't too much info to absorb, but feel free to ask me questions!