Support from Fellow Students
“When we tell our stories in a safe community, all those things that seperate us go away.”
- Sarah Markley
The below are all testimonials that have been written by fellow Massey Vet Students. We would like to thank each and every one of you for your vulnerability; it’s not easy to share the the difficult moments but your courage in doing so is appreciated by all of us.
If you would like to submit your own testimonial or have any questions, please contact the Vet Wellbeing Initiative on vetwellbeing@gmail.com.
#one: failing the year / taking time out
I’ve tried writing this quite a few times and it never comes out quite right. There are so many messages I want to hammer home for anyone who has failed (in any way
whatsoever). I also want to share some of my own experience to normalise failure and highlight its necessity. I can’t paint a complete picture but I hope that what I’ve written
provides some sort of insight…
Failing really sucks, no two ways about it, it feels like total shit. I’m ashamed of my failures, particularly ones that so many others can see. I’m scared of failure. I also know that when I fail, whether it be grades or my personal life, it will allow me to learn so much more. I can safely remind myself that failing is not wrong or embarrassing, it is necessary. That’s why I’m thankful for the ability to have repeated a year. Repeating helped to create a space in which I could learn (and still am) how to best support my needs as a person alongside the demands of vet school. This has been fundamental in my ability to continue my study. I was only able to recognise the changes I required, and the needs I wasn’t meeting, because of my failure. It forced me to reflect. Modifications in my study methods were important to consider. However, identifying what changes I needed in my emotional well-being, mental well-being, work-life balance, physical health, living environment, and who I spend time with, were essential. I have come out of my repeat year, maybe not happier but more secure in my knowledge of myself, and the way in which I interact with the world.
I encourage anyone who has failed or is repeating a year to make time to reflect, use the time to learn and choose to be kinder to yourself. Some weeks you’ll be feeling on top of everything, some weeks feel like you’re gonna be kicked out of vet school. Rely on your support system when you feel shit, empower others when they feel shit. My support system is made up of people from all sorts of communities within my life; students from other year groups, other courses, my parents, flatmates, friends, tutors, lecturers, supervisors, among so many others. There are so many people who will support and hold you up, way more than we ever realise. Don’t be afraid to lean on them, you will need them. Don’t be afraid to lean on yourself either. We can trust ourselves to have the skills needed to get back up and persevere. We will figure out the next steps, our support networks will be there to hold us until we’re ready to get back up.
We don’t always have the capacity for everything going on at uni, in our personal ives, or what’s going on around us, give yourself grace and remember you’re a human. When it gets too much, tell someone, share your feelings. It is so much easier to cope when you’re not coping alone. In these moments, sometimes getting a job done is getting it done to the minimum, congratulate yourself on getting it done. If you feel like taking a year off at any point in your uni career, do it. I may always question how my time at vet school could’ve been different if I had taken a year off after 2nd year that I was in such need of. Uni can always be completed at a later date, your health, both physical and mental, cannot.
Failure in any sense can be accompanied by complex emotions. Learning to hold and appreciate my feelings of shame, stress, anger, frustration, and fear while holding and appreciating my feelings of happiness, gratefulness, relief, forgiveness, and kindness has been weird but also very wonderful. It was quite the rollercoaster, but I don’t regret repeating one bit. I think part of the reason why I don’t regret it (and why I had such an emotional reaction) was the push it gave me to ask for more help. Failing was the final catalyst in my battle to properly advocate for my mental health. Doing so has enabled me access to support and treatment, which has genuinely been life-changing. I highly encourage you to seek support and appropriate treatment if you are struggling. It is not an easy process but I promise it is so worth it.
On a slightly less serious note:
I honestly felt a lot of relief in knowing that I was repeating. It wasn’t really a feeling I was expecting to feel, but I was so stressed about not knowing content, among so many other issues going on. Repeating was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me at that moment.
I’m so grateful for the friends that repeated with me, they have become incredibly important people in my life. Having students around me who understood was a gift.
My new year group is lovely (I would argue better than my last)!
Joining my year group meant finding more people to connect with is always pretty cool. And it meant I could interact with our community at university for a little longer, I was able to get far more involved with clubs and other co-curriculars.
Doubting yourself and your abilities is going to be a killer, remind yourself that you are more than capable, or get your friends, co-workers, whoever, to tell you themselves.
All experiences at vet school are different, some have the time of their lives, some have an absolute shit show of a time, most of us are gonna have a mixed bag. This is your experience, go at your pace. This applies both to vet school as a whole, but also to your practical skills, lecture schedules, notes, etc. Comparison is a bloody tricky concept to overcome!
You don’t have to listen to any of what I’ve written, but I hope that as you continue through study and your life outside of uni, you’ll feel a little more ready knowing that failing is expected, needed, and an important learning opportunity. You already have or will have the skills and support to keep going, you’ve got this!
We’re all on our own wobbly path, take the time you need, not the time others need.
#two: Burnout / Imposter Syndrome / Failing an Exam / Taking Time Out
“One new message in your portal”.
Nothing prepared me for what I saw when I pressed “Check Results”. Everything I had ever feared since getting into Vet School came crashing down on me. Imposter syndrome? Check. Anxiety? Check. Fear? Check. Paralysed state of what-on-Earth-am-I-going-to-do-now? Double check, for I had just received an email that told me that I had failed two papers in the first semester of fourth year.
I remember running to the bathroom and bursting into tears by the sink, desperately trying to wash the tears away so that my family wouldn’t notice. This was the first time I had seen my entire family and the first time we had been together in 2.5 years, thanks to the COVID pandemic. This was not the time for bad news. I pulled what little self I had together, walked back out and joined the dinner table.
I remember my Mum immediately making eye contact with me with a puzzled expression as to why I left to go to the bathroom in such a hurry and had come back with swollen eyes. In that moment I felt the lump of holy-sh*t-this-is-really-happening rise back up my throat and boom, there went the waterworks. I probably should have written down what had happened as my poor family had to endure minutes of me wailing and crying – as if someone had died before I had the strength to tell them what happened. I eventually managed to tell them what had happened and when I finished explaining the credit system (and that I was dangerously close to repeating a year and technically out of credits to use to resit another paper), there was silence. I sat at the dinner table, staring at the home-cooked food I had been dreaming of having for the past 2.5 years, feeling nothing but defeat. As I sat there wallowing (no, not like a deer), providing no helpful solution besides the odd “maybe I should take this as a sign that I can’t do this” or “maybe this is a sign I should give up and go into business or arts” and the infamous “maybe I should give up and become a stripper”. Now you may be thinking that this chain of thought seems a bit drastic for someone who only failed two papers; after all; I passed both the practical sections of each paper AND every other paper. Yet no, in that moment all I could think about was how I have been dreaming of becoming a vet since the womb and now the carpet had been pulled from underneath me and I was doomed. Thankfully my family ignored my pitiful cries of attention and continued brainstorming.
After several minutes my Mum turned to me and said, “I think you need a break”. I looked at my siblings and they nodded in unison. My Mum proceeded to tell me how at the end of third year I had been absolutely drained after yet another COVID scare (delta), another lockdown and another entire year away from home. She also reminded me of how she had suggested taking a gap year and how I refused, pledging that I was determined to: 1. Stay with my mates and 2. Push through and finish this degree. What happened next changed my trajectory for the better, as after a long silence, she turned to me and said, “you’re burnt out”… and I agreed.
Now here is something no one ever tells you about being burnt out (well nothing I’ve ever heard/read/watched did),
after a while, it becomes comfortable. In a weird and twisted way, you get used to it. That absolutely does NOT mean that it somehow is better than it seems and something you can just wait out, but if you are like me and are a creature of habit, you will soon not even notice it as it becomes a part of the everyday. I reached the peak of my burn out 2 years prior to this incident and I vividly remember emailing vet school to ask what my options were as I sat on the floor in my room in halls, spiralling. Why didn’t I take a break then? Well, the border was closed, all my friends were around me, life was not looking great and studying gave me a great purpose and distraction to what was going on in the world. However, my mind was not happy and I was not listening to what it needed… which was rest. Instead, I pushed myself to keep going and just making it through to the next year gave me false hope that maybe I had beaten burn out. Wrong.
Another thing I learnt the hard way: you can’t outrun burnout, it eventually catches up to you. I would always say that I felt burnt out, but never that I was. In other words, burn out was just the term I used to describe how: I struggled to get up every morning, I was on the brink of exhaustion every minute of every day (despite all my blood results saying my iron levels were fine – yes, I went so far as to get them checked, not a bad thing to do though!), nothing felt exciting to me, nothing in school or out of school interested me and above all, I felt as though I had no space in my brain! Occasionally I would find myself staring at a slide from a lecture, rewriting it and understanding it, only to walk away and forget it even existed. But had you asked me what I had for dinner over the weekend I could tell you right down to the dessert I had after.
This is my long, winded way of telling you that I refused to be burnt out by diminishing it to just a feeling, but it is not, it is a state of mind. It creeps up on you and stays with you and if you don’t address it, it becomes a constant negative in your life. It chipped away at my passion for hobbies, music (which those that know me, know plays a HUGE part in my happiness), vet school and even animals. I, along the way, lost my excitement to be a vet and felt so embarrassed to admit it to others or to figure out how/when/why. I have never talked about it before, but I promised I would be an open-book when writing this thus, open-book I shall be. Due to my embarrassment, I didn’t tell anyone and kept it to myself hoping that “she’ll be right” if I just kept going and didn’t think about it. It took me finally admitting that I was burnt out to finally get over this feeling of shame and to remember why I fought so hard to get accepted. Further, finally accepting that I was burnt out strangely made me want to be a vet even more. Burn out is real and it is hard, but most importantly, it is ok. If I could go back I would have addressed it a lot sooner and stopped trying to side step around it in hopes I could “beat the burn out”. After my Mum shared her honest thoughts with me that night and as the last tear rolled off my cheek, I decided to take a gap year. I can now say, without a single doubt, that was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made in my life.
Taking a break allowed me the opportunity to travel to India to attend one of my dearest cousin’s wedding. I was able to see elderly family members I had thought I wouldn’t have the chance to meet again, reconnected with aunts, uncles and cousins and most of all, celebrate the union of two beautiful people I am so grateful to call family. For the first time in a long time I wasn’t worried about my future or grades, I was with my family and I felt whole. I ate, drank, sang and danced, enjoying every moment of it. During this gap, I was also fortunate enough to travel back to South East Asia and tie up any loose ends. I got to say goodbye to my cat before we rehomed him, I organised boxes of my things that had been packed away when my family moved during the first lockdown, I had to renew identification documents and the list goes on. One of my highlights was meeting high school friends that I had only seen through Facetime for the last 5 years (never having our schedules match prior to the pandemic). There is nothing better than having a few drinks late at night with friends and having them remind you of the time you sat in a bucket and created so much negative pressure that you got stuck (true story)!
The gap year gave me time to switch off my vet brain for a bit and just relax. Not long after I decided to take a break did I begin to bored and sought after vet-related articles/shows/news. Not forcing myself to learn made me more inquisitive about veterinary medicine. A flicker of curiosity started from within. After a few months into my gap, the passion came back and in full force! Thankfully this was just in time for supps and strangely enough, almost every page of my notes I read stuck in my head! It was almost as if I had emptied the bin on my laptop (brain) and suddenly gained an enormous amount of space! This was evident in my supp results as there was no denying I passed them with flying colours. After this, I had a few months of break to rest a little bit more before I was to come back for the second semester of fourth year. I came back energised, enthusiastic and engaged, with a calm brain, unlike before when it was in a constant state of throbbing. Above all, I came back with the passion and determination to become a vet stronger than it’s ever been.
So, if you’re reading this and feel like this could be you, reach out for help. Don’t be shy! Getting help or taking a gap can seem daunting and scary as hell, but I promise you, the first step always seems like the hardest but once you get over it, you’ll be sweet as.