The making of a veterinarian

You work so hard to get to this point. And then you start at school, and it's a little bit frightening. I mean, honestly, the first day was there was a whole wide range of emotion, I mean, from everything from being excited to super nervous. And I remember the first lecture was just doctor Spondenberg listing goat breeds at us. And I just sat there thinking, Oh, my gosh, what have I gotten myself into? This is something I've been looking forward to my entire life. I've been working towards this dream. It was exciting, exciting, but also was very scared as if, Am I good enough? Am I going to make it? It's difficult in B school cause there's so much material, and you want to keep going and you could You could keep going forever. You could memorize everything, right? I had been told by someone they always described it as you're trying to drink from a fire hydrant, right? As the water is pouring out. There just wasn't enough hours in the day. I was trying to copy down my nos from the PowerPoints that we had. They don't tell you when you start a school, is that every semester gets progressively harder. Clinical skills and physical skills, like drawing blood, placing catheters and putting it into tracheal tubes, and also finding times to be tested on those things. It's a lot at once, which was neurology and some more difficult topics and ophthalmology and things like that. And I was really excited for those topics. I thought they were really interesting, but they are a lot more difficult than you I don't know, for me than I expected on the outside. I took an exam, and I did not do well at all. And I felt like I was a failure, you know, 'cause I was third year, I was in the food animal program on the Food Ani track. If you fail out of the program, or you just figure out it's not for you and you leave for some reason, what are you going to do next? And at that moment where I didn't succeed on that exam, I was actually crushed. I always had felt like I belonged here and I deserved to be here and I'd worked for it, but that was one of those days where I just was feeling so down about how much I was struggling that I was like, Maybe I'm not cut out for it. Maybe Baton Medicine isn't for me, like, maybe it's one exam, one exam. I was like, maybe it's not for me. Maybe, Maybe I just look into something else. And I think that's the hard part about VT school is that it's so much material in such a short period of time that there's just not enough time in the day to study everything. I think it wasn't until third year that everything started to more piece itself together. Before that, it was still I'm learning bits and pieces at a time. Here's all the information that we've gotten, and we've been able to accumulate, and then starting to put it into practice. To do my first say. That was very big to me because I always thought surgery was this big, scary thing and come to realize that it actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, and I'm pretty good at it. So that made me feel really good. I really like surgery. But the third year, for sure is when I was like, Yeah, veterinary medicine is for me. I can do this. We did sheep C sections, and I was the surgeon. So I was the one who got to do the C section and pull out the lamb. And I genuinely still remember the feeling of pulling out the lamb from this you, being like, I just did that. This lamb is coming into this world because I just burst it. Basically, I think one of the biggest factors in that school and one of the best things you get out of it are the relationships that you build? It's one of the main reasons why I ended up coming here. As a career path. It's being able to help those in a time of need is, like, It's what makes me happy and why that I get up every day. My name is Cala Blackman. I am a mixed animal tracker. I'm from Northern Virginia, and I went here for undergrad, and now vet school. Um, I'm looking forward to actually having patients of my own and getting to know my clients and becoming part of their family so we can kind of make decisions together for their animals health and well being. So I will be going to a mixed animal general practice in Southern Maryland, so not far from home. That school was hard. But I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to be here, and I'm glad I chose to go here, and I will forever cherish the friendships that I made here. So, my name is Emma Lesberg. I'm a public corporate tracker here at VM CBM, and I'm actually going to be heading off to Richmond after graduation. I'll be working in a small animal GP. I am unbelievably grateful for the professors, the staff, faculty, clinicians, everyone that we have worked with who has supported us as students. I just feel like they don't get enough credit for what they do for us, and I wish that I could do more for them because they have gotten me through everything. So my name is Parkes Harper. I am a food animal track student from Henderson, North Carolina, and my goal after graduation is to complete a larger roll rotating internship at the University of Tennessee. I do feel prepared, and I feel ready, and I'm just, like, excited to get out there and do it now. My name is Shayla Clay. I'm an equine tracker. I'm from California originally, and I'm heading back to the West Coast for an equine specific internship in Washington State outside of Seattle. I'm a little nervous going out into the real world, right? I'm going to be the doctor. But it's also the thing I've been hoping for my whole life. Mean? I mean, the little kid and me always wanted to be a vet, right, and all the animal activities I did growing up, everything was leading to this point. So the realization that it's happening and that I'm gonna be that doctor soon is really thrilling. H. My name is Victoria Marshall. I'm in the Small animal track, and I'm headed to Farmville, Virginia as a small animal general practitioner. My name is Roger Mack. I'm a mixed animal tracker here, fourth year veterinary student, getting ready to start on my next steps in journey in life. I'm heading up towards Columbus, Ohio to a tertiary facility up there that's a private practice, working with small animals predominantly. I'm we'll be working alongside multiple other emergency clinicians and hopefully heading into the track into emergency medicine. It's a tough. It's not easy. At Day medicine is not a walk in the park. You're going to have those challenges. You're gonna have those highs and lows. You may experience the father syndrome. You may experience A number of things, but if you fell in your heart and you know your heart that vetting medicine is what you want to do, then that drive to become a vetting medicine and make a difference in the profession. What should be going?