What to Expect in Veterinary School
You did it! You’re on your way to veterinary school. With this accomplishment comes a whole new list of concerns. I remember feeling completely overwhelmed with what I imagined veterinary school would be like. What do people wear? Can I really do this? Will I have a life? Here’s the insider scoop on your next four years.
Reality Check
Veterinary school is academically grueling. Classes and laboratories typically fill a 9am to 5pm day. Then you have to study. Gross anatomy will most likely be the most overwhelming course you’ll ever take. It consists of hours of laboratory time coinciding with lectures. You will learn the anatomy of a dog, cat, horse, ruminant, bird, and fish. You’ll be expected to know everything. You also need to keep in mind the first 2 to 3 years of veterinary school you will rarely touch a live animal. You’ll wonder if this is really what you wanted to do with your life. It happens to everyone.
The Adjustment Period and Your Peers
Nearly every veterinary student approaches the beginning of his/her first year of veterinary school worrying about how much studying and work the other students are doing. Veterinary school melds a vast array of people from all walks of life. The variety of personalities and age disparities can take you off guard. It is not uncommon to share a classroom with people pursuing second careers or with people who have grown children. The characters include:
- The maniacal studier who makes every other student feel inadequate
- The know-it-all who obviously knows it all
- The nonchalant student who thinks he/she has it all together but will fail the anatomy practical
- The party animal who hasn’t mentally left undergrad
- The hoarder…err…”dog rescuer” you smell before you see
- The drop-out…what was his name again?
- The silent majority who nervously study, safely pass, and make great veterinarians
You’ll make friends, develop study groups, and cope together. Your classmates are your closest allies; Nobody else can understand what you’re going through like they can. Don’t be afraid to join clubs and extramural sports leagues. It takes about a semester to find a reasonable balance between life and vet school. You can have a life in vet school but you’ll need to really work for it. I’ve seen relationships thrive and relationships fail. Make time now so you still have a life after graduation.
Sleep and Clinical Rotations
You will sleep fairly well during your first several years of school except during exams. Several years of having your nose in the books leads to the beginning of clinical rotations. This is the transition year from student to doctor and you must approach it as such to ensure you are prepared at graduation. Everything you thought you learned you’ve forgotten. You’ll be embarrassed when a clinician asks a question and you have no answer. This is normal. EVERY VET STUDENT STRUGGLES AT SOME POINT. If you knew it all you’d be a vet already. Time commitments vary based on the individual rotation. Rotations like anesthesia, surgery, and medicine will require long hours sometimes up to 80-90 hours a week. Other rotations, like dermatology and cardiology, have much friendlier hours. You need to make the best of your free-time and not forget about your life! Once you graduate, the world you left behind for four years welcomes you back!
Life
Vet school life is casual. There are clubs and organizations you can join. Some schools provide social outings and I encourage you to attend. You’ll also need to be prepared for constant inundation of advertisements for pet adoptions. Daily emails, flyers, and the occasional “dump” in the emergency room will all need homes. It is important to remember you are making the biggest difference in pet overpopulation by becoming a veterinarian. In addition, you’ll need to be prepared for fatigue, stress, and a degree of academic uncertainty you may not have experienced before. These stresses necessitate a healthy routine of diet, sleep, and exercise. You need to work even harder to maintain your relationships outside of vet school. Relationships can survive if you put forth the effort; I planned a wedding and was married during vet school. You should make every attempt to embrace vet school instead of fearing it – your next four years will fly by if you do!
Veterinary school is a means to an end. And in the end you’ll be a veterinarian!
From your experience, would one be able to get through veterinary school without having to work on an animal that’s been killed expressly for the purpose of the class? I suppose the alternative would be to work on animals that were euthanized for other reasons whose bodies were then donated to the vet school. Do people do that?
1Oh and this is a wonderful article. I am a potential career-changer going from finance to vet school and it is extremely insightful to be able to read about what to expect. I like that you’ve written about it without making it sound worse than it is or sugar-coating; usually people tend to do one or the other. Thanks!
2Anagha: It would be pretty difficult to get through something like gross anatomy without having a tangible model to study from but veterinary schools do provide models for students who object. Cornell is one school I know that has a library stocked full of models, computerized programs, etc. I can tell you, though, from personal experience that until you feel it in real life you’ll be at a disadvantage while learning surgeries. I *think* few veterinary schools practice euthanizing surgery patients following the procedure. My experience at Penn was students spayed/neutered dogs from the local animal shelter as part of a shelter medicine program. The animals were brought to the veterinary school, housed for a week, had one to two surgeries performed on them, and then were either adopted and returned to the adoption floor at the shelter.
You can also see if you can participate with the school’s pathology department while they do necropsies. These are people’s pets who are being medically examined so you’ll have very limited access to handle tissue but you will at least know the animal wasn’t euthanized expressly for your learning.
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