I was talking to a 4th-year veterinary student recently, and he was telling me about the starting salaries his friends were signing on for with their first jobs. Figures in the $150,000 range were not uncommon. [I’ve heard anecdotally about salaries hitting $200,000 for new grads in some metropolitan areas]. This may not sound like… Read More
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The Olympics are Good for Vet Medicine
I don’t fall in love with the Olympics every four years because the games showcase famous athletes at the height of their careers. I swoon for the regular folks who step forward out of obscurity and shine. It’s the people who could live in our neighborhoods, shop next to us in the grocery store, and… Read More
Did You Realize Life Required This Much Engagement? I Didn’t.
I don’t know where I got the idea that the point of younger life was to set yourself up so that older life ran on autopilot, but I was pretty sure this was how things worked. It’s not that I didn’t think life would be challenging after the age of 40. It’s just that I… Read More
The Three Most Wanted Traits in a Vet Professional
Last week I asked a group of about 30 medical directors to do a thought experiment with me. I asked them to imagine that their hospital was going to hire someone and that they get to request one characteristic or attribute for the new hire to have. I broke them up into small groups and… Read More
Burnout: The Problem with Fitness Influencers
Let me start by saying that this post is about veterinary medicine… I promise. One of the things I find most interesting about the internet is how it always skews to the extremes. Take fitness for example. The core tenets of exercise are pretty boring and haven’t changed much in the last 50 years. Sure… Read More
Perfectionism: How I Got it Wrong
There’s a saying in veterinary medicine about how half of what we know is wrong… we just don’t know which half. It’s impossible, after all, to continually learn things without disproving or (more commonly) significantly expanding on things we once thought were complete truths. I was reminded of this fact recently as I reflected on… Read More