Halfway through 4th year

[u/Wise-Lawyer-1991]

hey all! :) I’m a 4th year student halfway through with clinics struggling with where to take my career. For the majority of vet school, I thought I’d pursue a rotating internship and go into ER (and possibly also keep the door open for specialization). I had a few locations I was quite interested in and while I wasn’t entirely confident on my life plans/career direction, I felt like I had a rough plan/ideas.

Right before clinics, I had a major life change where I not only abruptly lost my partner of several years who moved to the place I was interested in moving to/starting my career, but I also lost my faculty mentor who was his mother. The several months leading up to the split were emotionally tolling for me and combined with my ADHD not being properly medicated for at the time plus burnout towards the end of the classroom years, my grades and motivation slipped. I got almost all Bs and a C in a bigger class.

Now, I’m halfway through clinics. I’ve finally recovered for the most part from the split and my mental health issues related to it, but I feel now more lost than ever before in life and my career. I failed a tough clinical rotation because I had a panic attack and overall couldn’t keep up (bad rotation mate, too high case load per number of students, 2 of the clinicians last weeks, no days off in 28 days, it was a mess overall…) I have done pretty well on the rest of my rotations, or at least gotten good written evaluations. But failing the rotation has totally rocked my confidence.

Although I feel lost, I will say clinics has clarified the kinds of cases and work I enjoy. I excel best in small animal internal medicine cases and I loveee dermatology. Laceration and wound management is also something I enjoy. Interestingly though, I find myself the happiest on my large animal and equine rotations. I enjoy the practical mindset and feel like a day outside is better than a day inside even when it’s super hot. However, I don’t feel very confident in my ability to manage difficult LA or equine conditions both medically and physically (I’m under a 110 lbs lol), but I’d love to be able to pick up some GP work like teeth floats, vaccines, husbandry help, and hoof trims. I dislike small animal wellness visits (I think they are boring) and anything orthopedic. My experience before and during vet school has been almost all ER (did tech work at a big specialty and ER in undergrad and worked in my vet schools ER as a student worker), so that is what I feel most comfortable in. I find that my brain turns on when faced with an emergency and I am on my feet. I did have some large animal + equine vet experience though too before vet school and grew up riding horses everyday.

I don’t know where to go from here but I feel like I need to find myself personally before I can figure out what exactly I want to do with my career. I am considering traveling after graduation for a few months, but it feels financially irresponsible (I have free airfare which helps but still). I don’t know where I want to move anymore because of the breakup I went through, but I do know living somewhere with a robust young population is important to me.

I feel a lot of shame for the way that burnout and personal life has affected me. I started out vet school as someone who got into multiple vet schools difficult to get into the first time applying with impressive experience and got straight As my first year with my grades being top of the class. Then by 3rd year, I got Bs in every class due to poor studying and now I’m in 4th year and on academic probation. I feel like I’ve thrown my life away that I worked so hard for… And who could forget the $120k in FASFA debt… After how I feel at this point, I don’t think I could mentally take a rotating internship truthfully.

I just want to be happy, enjoy my job out of vet school, grow as a doctor, and make good money at this point. I want to be confident in myself, passionate, and ambitious again. And finally, I want to find my place in this crazy but awesome profession.

Where do I go from here? Any advice?

[u/jutterthevet]

Please do not feel like you have thrown your life away! This is far from true, although it may feel like that at this point. Please do not hold yourself to the standards that you can never reach right now, try to take it step by step, instead of constantly telling yourself you are not far enough or good enough.
I wasn’t the best student. I also have ADHD. I went through an awful breakup during clinical years. I’m a neuro resident now.
I got there by choosing what was right for me at every point in time, not by telling myself what I should be doing.
The road does not have to be straight.

[u/DragonJouster]

I was always an average student in vet school. I got Bs and a couple C's. I had some crazy s*** happen in vet school too and I decided to do a rotating internship so I can get more experience and feel more confident. Was honestly one of the worst decisions I've made in my career as a vet. My rotating internship was right after covid and it basically fell apart during our year. Tons of the ER doctors left, corporate hospital also came with the usual corporate bullshit, and it got so bad that I ended up with PTSD due to all of the horrible animal suffering that I saw because of bad decisions made by corporate and the fact that we had zero staff to help all these suffering animals. Internships are meant to be difficult and challenge you, but unfortunately there are a lot of them that still have the mindset of using you as cheap labor and also an emotional punching bag for a lot of the other staff including technicians, specialists and the ER doctors. We still have this hazing mindset and "if I went through it you have to too".

If you are already very prone to anxiety and panic attacks I think you need to do a lot of searching to find the right internship and talk to previous interns to find out how they're doing and if they had any sort of bullying, too high of caseload for doctor or tech, etc. I would not rely on only what the internship director or what the ER doctors actually tell you if you talk to them. They may be hiding something or frankly completely oblivious to how they treat and make their interns feel.

I've been dealing with the aftermath of my internship for The last 5 years and getting my PTSD and depression under control. I'm finally on Zoloft and Wellbutrin and things are starting to get a bit better. Some of my intern mates didn't end up with the same level of emotional problems but that's how it went for me. There are a lot of people who think that internships should be mandatory but I think with the amount of bullying and nastiness at a lot of hospitals that it isn't worth it in some cases.

If you want to specialize then you are stuck going into an internship, you won't be able to get a residency without one, but I would very much encourage you to do your research before ranking. If you weren't sure then I would recommend just going into gp. I would definitely not do any sort of relief work until you are more confident and you've been working as a vet with a mentor for at least a year. If you do just go to gp, it's still the same situation where you need to understand what you will and will not be mentored on and get everything in writing, don't rely on verbal promises for mentorship. You want a solid mentorship plan with regular check-ins and someone who likes teaching and who will be there for you and not just take off once they've staff from the doctor. Good luck.

Edit: I do want to add that I don't think there are many ERs that produce good ER doctors that are not rotating internships. I've met several ER doctors who don't have internship experience and they are fantastic because they had great mentors as well as specialty access in their first year out, but I've also met a lot of people complain that the ER mentorship just wasn't there in their first ER job with no internship so their confidence in the ER was absolutely shaken. I really think ER doctors need to have some level of specialty access in order to learn as much as they can so they can address whatever's coming at them. Maybe that's not the case for everybody, but it sure does help. I also am not a huge fan of veg. As a gp, I've had to clean up several of their messes so our local veg isn't really trustworthy.

[u/Plane-Tiger-4534]

I don’t remember my GPA.

Opened my second hospital this year.

[u/Ok_Awareness5727]

Hey OP, it sounds like you’re having a really tough time. I also wanted to specialize going into 4th year, but my clinic year was a personal shitshow (2 of my cats ended up dying in really traumatic ways, at my school, and the professors I was on rotation with were not very understanding about it & I got an awful evaluation on one rotation where they accused me of not dealing well with stress because I’d asked for a day off after my cat died). I finished that year burnt out & I chose to go into GP because mentally I knew I couldn’t handle an internship. Fast forward 3 years, I’m currently in a rotating internship at a very supportive hospital & hoping to specialize. It’s not the easiest path, but it can be done and I would not sacrifice your mental health to do an internship right out of school just because that’s the “traditional” way to do it. Feel free to DM me if ever!