In one, the owner knew it was time. There was a large, adhered mass on the pet’s abdomen. He’d had animals his whole life, yet said it never gets easier.

In another, the family had watched their pet decline slowly over time. A senior patient with multiple issues. But they didn’t expect today to be the day. Nobody does. Knowing the prognosis, they chose to say goodbye so she wouldn’t keep suffering.

In the third, the parents came in expecting a workup, a diagnosis, a cure. They were willing to do anything, no matter the cost, to save their beloved baby. But there are conditions where the kindest decision is also the hardest one.

Between these appointments, the veterinarian moved between rooms, juggling annual wellness visits. Smiling at families as they walked in. They didn’t know what happened behind the closed door, and she didn’t expect them to. She swallowed the last hour of grief, straightened her shoulders, and came back out with a new smile.

People ask whether we become numb to these heart-tugging, gut-wrenching moments, sometimes one after another on the same afternoon. In a way, yes. We have to set the weight aside to keep going.

But those pets, those tearful owners, never leave us. We cry sometimes, quickly and quietly, in the bathroom between appointments. Or later at home, into our pillows before we sleep.

I still struggle with euthanasias. We don’t get much practice before graduating. My first time discussing the decision with a pet owner was during a simulated exercise in third year of vet school. The actor said, “I’ve had this dog for ten years.” I broke into tears and had to stop the simulation.

I got pulled into the river of emotions the client was feeling. And once I’m fully in the water with them, I can’t get us both back to shore. I’ve gotten better at the outward stuff—the clear communication, the appointment flow, the art of making someone feel heard. But inwardly, I still struggle to stay steady when those emotions rise.

Yet amongst the blue hues, there is beauty. In the whispered “it’s going to be okay,” until someone believes it. In the gentle and loving way hands caress the fur, just out of habit. In the silent waiting room when the light at the front desk turns on, and other owners hold their pets a little tighter.

There is dignity in it. There is love.

My role as a veterinarian, I keep reminding myself, is to be a guide. To help families move through the decision, not to carry it for them. Empathy helps me understand, and that makes me a better clinician for my clients and patients. But I’m learning to walk alongside those emotions instead of sinking into them. After all, I’m not the one experiencing the loss. It’s not my grief to take.

I don’t know what my first real euthanasia with a client-owned patient will look like. I expect it to be emotional. I expect myself to burst into tears at some point, hopefully not in the room, but probably in the room.

Bearing witness to grief will likely never get easier. Even so, I intend to get better. For the pet who deserves a calm hand at the end, and for the family who needs someone they can trust in the most painful hour.

One particularly hectic day, while juggling three things at once, I was tasked with spinning blood for PCV and TP. Not to blame the busyness, but it’s very easy for one’s mind to scramble when the entire place is in full chaos. Though I was trained to thrive in chaos (I’d worked at an emergency clinic before), I was a little rusty. After all, this was my first time back in a clinical setting in three years.

I carefully put the blood tubes in the machine. These tubes are so tiny you have to handle them with the delicacy of a British person holding their teacup, pinky out preferably.

I checked the orientation. Checked the balance. Closed the lid.

And I forgot one crucial thing: to screw on the plate (dun dun dunnnn).

Something (is it you God?) must have made me linger a few seconds after hitting start, because what followed was an alarming symphony of shattering glass that absolutely should not come from a normally functioning centrifuge.

Did I panic? Hell yeah. My heart was probably spinning at the same rate as that centrifuge. I felt sweat dripping down my face, a sensation I hadn’t experienced in days (you can tell I’ve been skipping the gym). Did I feel like an absolute idiot? A hundred percent. But mistakes happen, and I wasn’t going to let one (almost) broken centrifuge turn me into a broken person. So I asked the vet how to disassemble the machine, carefully cleaned up the shards1, and moved on.

Or so I thought.

Just when I was about to feel relieved, I made ANOTHER mistake (one, apparently, was not enough for the universe). I grabbed KimWipes to clean instead of regular paper towels (again, dun dun dunnn). If everyone treated KimWipes like ordinary tissues the way I did, we’d have to sell some (human) kidneys to keep the wildlife centre running. Again, my fault entirely. My vet, bless her, simply said: "You've done it once, you never do it again."

In another environment, I might have been scolded, or worse. Heck, if I were a paid worker, some places might have shown me to the door. Maybe they considered it here too, but the beauty of being an unpaid student is job security by default. But everyone here has been so kind, patient, and encouraging. My vet let me draw blood, take X-rays, assist in surgeries, and give injections via multiple routes. I was learning constantly, and more importantly, I was having fun. The kind I hadn't felt since the surgical spay and neuter labs last year.

The drive to placement is an hour each way. I used to dread it. Turns out it’s actually a blessing in disguise.

Words can't quite describe the beauty of what I see on the road. Rolling hills (make me go WEEEEE), endless green fields stretching from one side to another, rivers catching the sunlight like iridescent fish scales. There's a bridge I cross where water stretches out on both sides, sparkling and serene on sunny days, moody and mysterious on misty ones. One day I stumbled through a town called Rockwood, and the houses were ENOURMOUS! Absolute mansions! Beautiful place, officially on my list to explore someday.

The wildlife sightings alone make the drive worth it. Turkey vultures and Canadian geese soaring in the sky above. A bald eagle, once. A red-tailed hawk, perching on a tall tree like it owned the whole town. Goslings waddling after the parents with their tiny little webbed feet, my absolute favorites! And so many cows and horses dotting the fields. I’d changed up my routes just to see what else is out there, because an hour of the same road gets boring fast.

Now, I’m gonna be completely honest. I love horses, but I have no business working with them. They’re majestic and beautiful. But to tell a 1,100-pound animal what to do, you need a stern, commanding energy, a “no-bullshit” demeanor which I completely lack. I came to this difficult conclusion after a long period of careful reflection (I totally lied; one hard fall and a trip to the ER was enough).

People, on the other hand, I think I can handle. Maybe I should have gone the medical doctor route—actually, I take that back, can’t deal with that. Again, it’s a me problem, not a them problem. Human blood makes my knees go weak.

All that aside, for the first time in a while, I understood something I’d been too tired to feel in three years of vet school: this is the job. The animals, the mistakes, the colleagues’ support, and the hour of rolling hills whilst watching hawks sitting on trees like they owned everything. All of it, on the same day.

To be continued…

Then my phone lights up. A meme from my brother, who is probably strapped to a desk at McMaster University (JHE or Thode library, specifically), also awake, also behind, and convinced this next exam will finally break him. We talk about school constantly, but we’ve never talked about it being a problem.

He’s a third-year in Electrical Engineering, so school is doing him some critical damage, too (probably even worse than the hits he took in League of Legends). Even when school is the only thing on his plate, he still lets it take over his entire headspace, looming like a giant dark cloud of anxiety and frustration, threatening to burst at any moment. We’ve both been there—staring at our grades and feeling like we could have done better, yet everything we try still lands us at a less-than-ideal average. Is it because we set the bar too high, putting too much weight on our grades? Or are we wasting time dreading the doom, when that same precious time could be spent outdoors, refreshing our minds, moving our bodies, and recharging ourselves so that our actual study time could be more efficient?

I think my brother and I share the “lost-in-the-sauce” genes, where we let whatever is in front of us slowly consume everything. We fixate on it, making it bigger and more threatening day by day, until we forget there was ever anything else. And then we wonder why we’re so exhausted.

If three of my personal life aspects walk into a bar (call it the S-tiered trio): Sleep, Social Life, and School—the bartender would say, “Sorry, we only serve two of you at a time. Actually, it’s April, so only one of you can stay.” And we all know who’s staying until 3am, drowning in caffeine and her own tears.

But fortunately, not all veterinary students share this self-destructive mentality (and if you don’t, consider yourself lucky for already having life figured out. Kudos!). I really admire one of my classmates, Chang, for it. After a tough exam, we talked about our plans for the rest of the day. Mine was to go home and nap. His was to go to the gym. He mentioned he had been gymming every single day and sleeping nine hours every night. When I asked him how he found time to study for exams, he said, "I just study whatever I get to, and whatever I can." That stuck with me. School simply cannot matter more to him than his health. I now picture Chang with a full glowing halo around his body. Bro is 25 and has already reached enlightenment.

To be completely honest, I’m still struggling to balance and prioritize my health over school. So many questions, so many fears. Can I get things done if I stop studying when I’m tired? What if I only dedicate one hour instead of three? Will I still remember what I need to? Or am I not studying effectively and losing 40% of my time to doomscrolling and distractions?

The deeper issue, though, is that I often tie my self-worth to my grades. In first year, vet school was all exciting and new. I was eager to learn about anatomy, surgery, and how to physically examine animals. In second year, things quickly ramped up. Courses got heavier, with names that were hard to remember and even harder to pronounce (remember Levetiracetam?). I started seeing 70s and 60s and got so negative, so wound up in those marks. I spent my entire second year just trying to keep my average from dropping (I was taking it so seriously that it actually got a tiny bit better than first year. Progress, I guess?).

Then third year came, and I was just tired. Tired of that mentality, of associating my identity with a number on a screen. So I made a conscious decision to let go. Instead of getting upset over every mark or obsessing over every fine detail in the material, I spent time focusing on my mental health. I journaled, wrote, played music, and spent lots of quality time with family, friends, and myself. It truly helped.

But I still can’t get the physical health right! I still can’t push myself to go to the gym, or to sleep before midnight, or to consistently get eight hours. We’re almost halfway through 2026, and I’m still not hitting 2 out of 3 of my New Year’s health resolutions (I did manage 1 out of 3, which was to be more reflective and look inward rather than outward. More on that another day).

At least now, with every minor inconvenience, I’ve learned to bring myself back down instead of having a full meltdown (breakdance over breakdown, amirite?). I look at life a little happier and lighter than I did in 2025 (it was a struggle year). I smile more at the little things. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Maybe I should just give myself a pat on the back for climbing out of the hole that 2025 dug. Congratulations: you are still alive, a bit more yourself, and positively, slightly perkier.

Either way, this next chapter looks completely different from anything before it. Lectures are done, proctored exams are done, and late-night cramming is hopefully done too. The one exam that matters right now is the NAVLE. Most of my days from here on out will be spent in clinics, working with real animals and real people, applying what actually matters after three years of vet school. And it’s definitely not what kind of teeth a crocodile has (I apologize to my Comparative Anatomy professor, whom I truly adore).

Nervous? Absolutely.

Excited? More than I know how to say.

Whether I’ve finally left the grade-chasing behind, or just traded it for a different kind of dread? I guess we’ll find out.

We already know the usual reasons: witnessing suffering, carrying clients’ grief, living with the guilt of not always being able to save our patients, etc. But I think there’s another that we don’t talk about enough.

Veterinarians don’t give themselves enough credit.

The thought came to me while I was scrolling LinkedIn (aka the social media platform for successful people). Reading through everyone’s posts, I had to laugh a little. Most of the posts were like this:

“Excited to share that I’ve completed XYZ!”

“Thrilled to announce that I’ve joined ABC as their new [insert impressive title]!”

And the comments? Flooded with warm “congratulations” and “well deserved”. It reminded me of how we Substackers cheer each other on for hitting 10 subscribers (which I haven’t even gotten to yet).

Then I looked at my veterinarian friends and colleagues’ profiles on LinkedIn (hiii yes I’m stalking you 💜). And I noticed something: the majority don’t post about themselves. It made me wonder, how often do we actually celebrate ourselves in this field?

The realization hit me again in my therapist’s office. I was telling her about my exam schedule this year (10; the fact that I haven’t gone insane is a miracle), and I said it very matter-of-factly. Like how it just rained today and that I have 5 more exams in the next week and a half. The look of shock on her face, followed by “You guys are SO brave”, reminded me of the truth:

✨ we are motherf*cking badasses.✨

There, I put some sparkles so that it stands out enough to remind us of something we might have forgotten during our chase for success.

Vets are so cool

I’m not here to brag! But I think the only way to make this point is to actually say write it out loud. So bear with me for a second.

To get here, I moved halfway across the world. I studied science in my second language (and let’s be honest, biology and chemistry are practically languages of their own). I spent years accumulating animal experience, chasing the kind of portfolio that might be good enough to be considered. I pushed myself to hit 80s-90s because anything less wasn’t going to cut it.

Then came vet school (Lord help us all), which is another level of game entirely. We’re talking about compressing the knowledge of 30+ textbooks into a human brain, while learning to navigate ethical dilemmas and make difficult decisions in some of the most emotionally wrecking situations imaginable. Then, finally, we bet it all on a seven-hour exam that decides if we are worthy of that white coat (that’s the NAVLE, for North Americans at least).

And I’m not even there yet. But I look at the veterinarians ahead of me and I’m in awe. I know vets who already held degrees from other countries, crossed oceans, and went through the entire licensing process again from scratch, just to keep doing the work they love here.

I ADMIRE us all, who are brave enough to walk this path.

Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t get here on my own. I have had immense support from friends, family, mentors, and luck, that helped me reach where I am now. But see, I just did it again. I immediately went for humility instead of taking a moment to say: I worked incredibly hard to get here. We worked incredibly hard to get here. And we deserve to acknowledge that.

Maybe you’re reading this and you don’t feel like you’ve earned any congratulations yet, because your finish line is still ahead of you. Maybe it’s that surgical residency. Maybe it’s an acceptance letter from OVC. That drive, that relentless ambition—that’s what makes you extraordinary. But before you sprint toward the next milestone, let me hold your hand and gently tell you this: don’t forget to look over your shoulder at how far you’ve already come.

If you’re not ready to celebrate yourself, let me start for you.

To the pre-vets wondering if they have what it takes:

Look at everything you’ve already done: the research, the networking, the volunteering you squeezed in between everything else while spending late nights keeping your grades up. You are so close! Keep going to make your dream come true. I believe in you!

To the vet students questioning if they belong:

You did not get in vet school by mistake. You earned your seat through hundreds (maybe even thousands!) of hours of hard work, sacrifice, and determination. The doubt you’re feeling right now is not a sign you’re in the wrong place. It’s a sign you care deeply about the right one. Trust me when I say: you are right where you need to be. You are smart enough! You are capable enough! Go back to the reason you started.

To the veterinarians doubting their abilities:

You made it through vet school. You sat the NAVLE for God’s sake (and I’m scared shitless for it right now). You have faced hard cases, seemingly impossible decisions, and heartbreaking outcomes, yet you still showed up again the next day. That is one of the strongest things a person can do. You are more capable than you give yourself credit for. You can will handle anything in your way!

Dear pre-vets, vet students, and vets, here’s my bottom line:

Start tracking your wins.

Write them down on a sticky note or an actual piece of paper. Pin the list somewhere you’ll actually see it: your desk, the fridge, the bathroom (so you get a sweet reminder whenever you poop). On days you feel like you’re not good enough, let that list argue back for you.

I’m so dang proud of you, of us.

Because whether we admit it or not,

we are all doing something brave.