Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you probably just cleared one of the biggest hurdles you have faced in your budding new career: Getting Into Vet School! As you have probably heard multiple times on your journey to this point, “Getting in is half the battle…” Take a second to be proud of yourself for that!

You know what?! We’re doing it right now…

Inhale, exhale, and say your proud of yourself.

…Out loud this time.

Yeah, that’s right, I can see through the 4th wall of blog post.

Great! Now that we have that taken care of, time to prepare for the precipice that is YOUR FIRST SEMESTER OF VET SCHOOL.

Ignore the booming thunder in the background, it’s totally normal around here. But, seriously, pretty much everyone in my class got accepted, had 15 minutes of celebration and went, “…Now what?” I personally didn’t know anyone currently in vet school and I really didn’t know who to ask what to expect, so I went into the experience blind. I’m here to try and prevent that from happening to you, dear reader, so you may avoid the mistakes I made and can go off and make your own jolly mistakes.

Then you can start a blog your fourth year and warn future generations of YOUR mistakes. It’s a beautiful cycle.

ONTO THE LIST! These are the 5 things I wish I knew before my first semester of vet school:

1. The competition is OVER!

Remember how in undergrad you had to beg, borrow, and steal to get every single opportunity? How a professor may have told a class full of pre-vets that only 5% of you would go on to become veterinarians? Maybe you had all the acceptance statistics for every vet school memorized? Yeah, getting into vet school is extremely competitive. Admittedly, it can really mess with you and just constantly stoke that competitive drive every vet student seems to have. Some of us just love competing, some just adopted the mentality to hopefully get that acceptance letter.

But guess what? Competitions over.

That’s right. What stuck with my class all through vet school was what our teachers at the start of the year told us:

“We have a DVM for each of you.”

It didn’t matter who got a 4.0, it didn’t matter who was involved in more clubs, it didn’t matter who got a full ride scholarship. Everyone was getting the exact same DVM. What that did for us was made us realize, it really isn’t a competition anymore. There’s not a limited number of spots for people to get degrees. You and your classmates are all in this together. If you can all make it to the end, you all get to be doctors.

That’s where your choice comes in. Do you reenact a vet med themed version of the Hunger Games? Or do you collaborate? Collaboration is one of the biggest challenges and greatest assets you have going into vet school. Our class became expert collaborators. Yeah, we compete now and then, but over important things… Like quiz bowl. But if we had a tough class that was eating everyone alive? EVERYONE shared notes, flashcards, secret test taking rituals, the whole nine yards. We worked together to make sure we ALL succeeded. When you’re facing a workload like vet school, the more collaboration, the better.

2. Your hobbies will save your mental health.

Oh, did you think I was going to tell you what textbooks to buy? Pffft, that’s further down. But before you slink off further down to the good stuff, let’s take a minute to talk mental health.

It’s not really a secret anymore that vet med has a notoriously bad track record for mental health. Not One More Vet is an organization based all around improving mental health for veterinary professionals. So, I want to take this time before you get into the thick of school to start prioritizing your mental health.

What does that look like? Truthfully, it won’t ever look the same for people. Some people will go to the gym every day. Some people wander around hiking trails with their dogs. Some people enjoy driving three hours simply to hit up Black Sand Beach only to get sunburned and rained out (that’s how I got into a group chat called Cwispy Hot Friends. But that’s another story).

So, what should you do? My best advice is to remember to carve out time in your schedule for your mental health. Some people physically schedule a time to do this. I went for a goal for at least 3 hours a week. No studying, no homework, no school. Simply enjoy this time to do what you like.

Admittedly, I did not always hit this goal. When I was in first year, I rode my horse. And often if I felt behind on studying, I would skip riding to cram for exams. And it often didn’t do me any good. A lot of times, taking an hour to do something to give my brain a break would help my scores more than an extra hour of cramming. So take the time now to prioritize your mental health. You will thank yourself later.

3. It’s like, really hard guys…

Okay this is where we talk about textbooks. Not really. We’re talking about vet school being very difficult. I assume you probably had an inkling of it being hard. It’s obvious but I do want to bring it up because it’s not just “hard”. It’s hard-hard. It’s difficult in a way that is very different from undergrad and even from working full time (for all you non-traditional students out there, I see you boo).

First off, you don’t have those really nice 3-hour gaps between classes like you did in undergrad. Or lab days that were only one day a week. Or days where you didn’t go into class at all. OH, HOW I MISS THOSE DAYS! Vet school is not like that.

My first semester of vet school you came in at 8am. You were in didactic lectures for the morning with a 10-minute break every hour. Then an hour for lunch. Then back to class in the afternoon, usually in labs until 5pm. Oh, but if there was a test you just studied as soon as you got home. When was there a test? Oh, every week. Sometimes twice a week. See what I mean when vet school is hard-hard?

“But I work full time! I know what it’s like to be going from 8 in the morning until 5 at night!” Sure. Maybe that’s a similar setup to your current job, but do you take that job home with you every night, to prep for that same job in the morning? If you do, sounds like you have a poor work life balance. But in vet school that’s often what you MUST do to stay caught up. Is it still poor work life balance? Yes. But the goal is that it is temporary while you are in school. And if you follow my advice in point 2, it’s somewhat manageable.

Just remember, it’s going to be hard. This is why collaboration, prioritizing your mental health, and having good support systems are crucial for this time in your life. Don’t forget, you have a whole class that is going through it with you, and students ahead of you that went through it not long before you. Understand it’s going to be hard, and reach out when you are struggling.

4. You are bound by the laws of time space. Sorry about it.

I guess this is more for me and the folks out there with time blindness. What I mean in this case is, it is nearly impossible to work ahead in vet school. Not without SOME type of sacrifice. You crammed on Clinical Pathology for 6 hours, great. But then you lost 6 hours of study time on the 5 other classes you’re taking. You took an hour to go work on club activities over lunch, awesome. But you forgot to pack a lunch and now you can’t get lunch because you must go back to class. You shaved down your dinner prep by 45 minutes, baller. But your dinner is literally cheese, crackers, and apple slices. It’s very Newtonian. Every action: equal and opposite reaction.

So, what do you do? As the great Mother of Maddy would say…

“Where’s your planner?”

Jennifer, circa literally every year since I could hold a pen.

If you don’t like planners, substitute “where’s your organization system?” and you’ve got the idea. Keep a good handle on what’s due, what commitments you’ve made, what you need to prioritize. Planners are a great tool for this. I also tend to keep just random to-do lists around for study sessions, and journals for long term planning. Bullet journals are another great tool. I used them exclusively for notes during my second year. Any system you use should help you keep track of what is happening without needing to constantly dedicate brain space to it.

Having your environment organized is also important. I am guilty of this all the time. But something like having a cluttered car can sometimes be enough to overwhelm you without you even noticing. Keeping things orderly can help remove the visual stimulation that can distract you from your studies. You may not even notice it until you go through and straighten things up. Untidy room = untidy mind.

5. Improvise, adapt, overcome!

Everyone hates this one, WHICH IS WHY I BRING IT UP. One of my lovely character traits is that if something is not working for me, we pivot and try something else. It’s one of the things that probably stressed my classmates out to no end.  

“Hey Maddy, what are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m just restructuring how I study”

“… Why?”

“Well my study strategies for Anatomy aren’t working for Immunology so I’m attempting to make a mind palace so-“

“MADDY THE MIDTERMS IN A WEEK AND YOU’RE MAKING A MINDPALACE?!”

Yes, I did make a mind palace for Immunology. Do I regret pumping that much work into developing a new study strategy? Absolutely NOT. Because sometimes, that’s just what you have to do. Anatomy is not taught the same way as immunology, and both are taught differently at different schools. You may encounter things that are not intuitive for you to learn. Some people really struggle with didactics. Some struggle with kinesthetic skills. Its up to you to adapt to how things are given to you, and figure out how best to absorb the material.

Another note on change, things will change up in vet school a lot. Sometimes it’s as simple as a class time gets flipped around, or you need to switch a lab. In my case change looked like moving from completely in person learning to learning online for a year. Things happen. It won’t always go your way. Remember to stay open minded to when these changes hit, or you need to make a change. Sometimes it’s better to quit what’s not working and adapt rather than trying to tough it out.

And on that note… That’s everything I wish I knew before starting. It’s by no means an exhaustive list of everything that is going to happen to you in your first semester. But it will serve you well in the days to come. Every vet student has a unique experience during those short (yet long) four years. Take care of yourself on your adventure. Don’t forget to have fun. And definitely don’t forget to look back once in a while, just to see how far you’ve come.