Join VIN Foundation Board Member, Dr. Matt Holland, in his conversation with Dr. Serena Nayee as they discuss how the cultural difference between animal and human medicine lead her to veterinary medicine. She shines a light on the important difference between a curated reality, and the everyday work it takes to pay attention to mental health. With a thoughtful vulnerability, Serena shares her mission to help colleagues feel comfortable in their own skin while fighting to diversify the veterinary experience.
GUEST BIO:
Serena Nayee, DVM
Dr. Serena Nayee is a 2020 graduate of the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine. Serena and her siblings were raised with a multicultural background, rooting from strong Gujarati and American values. After graduating high school in Fishers, Indiana, she completed her Bachelor of Science in Microbiology at Ohio State University, before heading to veterinary school. Serena’s interests in the veterinary profession are focused on emergency medicine and development of affordable and accessible urgent/preventative healthcare (clinical and policy) to diversify the veterinary field, with a commitment to the value of One Health. In 2020 she founded Chapter VIII: Veterinary Inclusion and Intersectionality Initiative, to promote inclusive advocacy and education, intersectional art and story-sharing, communication workshops, community mentorship, and diversifying professional experience. Outside of veterinary medicine, Serena enjoys writing poetry and short literary fiction, singing, reading, and filming/editing videos.
LINKS AND INFORMATION:
- VIN Foundation I Want to be a Veterinarian: https://iwanttobeaveterinarian.org/
- VIN Foundation Vets4Vets®: https://vinfoundation.org/vets4vets
- Chapter VIII Veterinary Inclusion and
Intersectionality Initiative: https://www.facebook.com/chapterviiiboard/ - Chapter VIII email: chapterviiiboard@gmail.com
- Pawsibilities: https://pawsibilitiesvetmed.com/
Learn more about the Veterinary Pulse podcast and the hosts on the VIN Foundation website: https://vinfoundation.org/podcast
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TRANSCRIPT
Intro
Serena Nayee, DVM: Everything seems so clear cut, but there is a lot of struggling mentally, physically, emotionally that went into it and we need to recognize that as well.
Jordan Benshea: That is Dr. Serena Nayee, and this is the VIN Foundation’s Veterinary Pulse podcast. I’m Jordan Benshea, Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Join me and our cohost and VIN Foundation board member, Dr. Matt Holland, as we talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics, and share stories. Stories that connect us, as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible through individual donations to the VIN Foundation. Thank you. Please check the Episode Notes for bios, links, and information mentioned.
Meet Serena Nayee, DVM
Matt Holland, DVM: Alright, well, thanks for joining us, Serena.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Of course, I’m happy to be here.
Matt Holland, DVM: It’s nice to have you. I want to give the audience a little intro for how we met. Serena reached out to me on Instagram, maybe four or five years ago I would have thought what the heck is that, but here we are in 2021 and our relationship kind of grew from there. We got to know each other and had a zoom call. I thought she would be a great fit for this podcast. So, thanks again for joining us.
Serena’s Journey to Veterinary Medicine
Matt Holland, DVM: I guess we can get started with the start of your story. Where were you born and raised?
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, it’s not a problem to be here at all. I’m happy to be here. I was born and raised in Fishers, Indiana. I am still currently here, which is not what I planned for, but I hear a lot of life is not what you planned for. So, I will probably be here for a little bit longer, but the plan is to eventually expand out further to bigger cities in the US.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, that’s one of the things that you and I have in common. I am talking to you from the house I grew up in, and that is not what I planned for, but here we are. We’re not too far away. I’m just outside Chicago, you’re in Indiana, we could probably do a day trip and hang out once the pandemic fog is lifted.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Absolutely, yeah.
Matt Holland, DVM: So, at what point from starting out in Indiana, did you decide that you wanted to be a veterinarian.
Serena Nayee, DVM: I was one of the basics that wanted to be a vet since I was little, but my reason for pursuing vet med changed a lot over time. When I was younger, I knew that I wanted to be a dog vet. That was my thing. I just loved dogs, and it is still kind of me. Dogs will always hold a special place in my heart. As I grew older, I realized that I have a lot of interests in the public health aspect of vet med. So, I thought that I wanted to do research in public health for quite some time. Once I got to undergrad, I decided to pursue a microbiology degree, and from there on, I wanted to find research opportunities to enhance my application to apply to vet school. So, it wasn’t a plan to be in research forever. It was essentially to make my application more competitive, but I ended up liking it a lot. The parts about research that I really loved was the diversity aspect of it. Getting to meet a lot of different people doing a lot of different things in vet med and none of it, essentially none of it, really felt like vet med. It felt like we had access to the world with science, because everybody was connected on this one thing, so I thought that was really, really beautiful. Eventually, I started to learn about one health and the connection of vet med as an integral component of access to human health care, access to environmental health. That’s what kept me going, especially when growing up, I was told, “why not be a human doctor?”, because culturally that was respected a lot more than going into vet med. I felt like I had to find a lot of different things about vet med to justify why I wanted to go into it. So, it was like, well, look at all these reasons, look at how involved we are in research, look at where we are in vaccine development, because of vet med. Eventually, my justification for pursuing vet med became my reason for pursuing. That’s where the clinical to non-clinical transition happened for me. I was really, really set on doing that until the pandemic hit, and I realized that I needed something that I could really rely on and could help to pay off loans immediately. So, a clinical position is what I took, but I definitely don’t regret it at this point. I think it’s opened a lot of new doors for me.
Matt Holland, DVM: Well, I have two questions now. What are the doors that have been opened?
Cultural Challenges and Pursuing Vet Med
Matt Holland, DVM: Also, when you say why not going to human medicine because that’s more culturally respected, which culture are you talking about?
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yes, so I am Indian, who dropped the Indian. My parents grew up in the UK, so they’re pretty familiar with westernized culture. Aside from the fact that the British colonized India, and that pretty significantly affected how the intricacies of Indian culture works, but that’s a whole different conversation again. They’re familiar with Western culture, so I think that was a really difficult thing to work with growing up is knowing that, okay, my parents are familiar with westernized culture, but there’s just so much pushback for a lot of things that I would have expected them to be familiar with, or have already accepted, but I think part of moving to a new country comes with a burden of feeling, or and a sense of guilt of feeling like you need to carry on certain cultural perspectives. One of them being that animals are…, animals, essentially, belong outside, they’re not really a part of the family. They can be companions, but you shouldn’t really be that involved with them. They’re dirty. They just carry disease and stuff. That became sort of the reason for pursuing vet med, is okay, they don’t have to have diseases. They can be a part of our families. They can be involved in our day to day lives. That was the pushback in pursuing vet med. If you’re already going to learn that much about animals, why not just apply it to human medicine. In Indian culture that’s just significantly more respected. That’s changing over time. Definitely, there’s been a huge shift since I was a kid. That’s really amazing to see, and my boss is actually Indian as well. So, he definitely understands where I come from in terms of having that pushback growing up. He’s somebody that I respect a ton. One of the doors that has opened up for me, which he has allowed for me to have, is early practice ownership and early leadership opportunity.
Matt Holland, DVM: Look at that, you answered both questions at the same time.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, I tried to. There’s just so much that’s intersectional. That’s my goal in life is to find intersectionalities in life and highlight them. That’s one of them. I am proud to say that I am now a practice owner, as well as medical director, and only 26 years old.
Matt Holland, DVM: Congrats. Wow.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. It’s not ever something that I would have imagined saying, especially just one year ago, five years ago. It’s just, there’s so much I think about people that we look at on paper, on their resumes, on social media, for example, and it’s just snapshots of their life and everything seems so clear cut. But this has taken a lot to get to, and we can get into that later, too, but I think that’s also something that I would like to show to the world. That, yes, this is where I’m at right now. But on paper, it may look like things were happenstance or they turned out really well. There is a lot of struggling mentally, physically, emotionally, that went into it, and we need to recognize that as well.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, you said we can get into it later, but why not now?
Serena Nayee, DVM: Okay.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah, let’s hear it.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Sure.
Matt Holland, DVM: I think it’s important too, because I totally agree with you about how we see snapshots of other people’s lives, and things may appear, I don’t know if this is the right word, but easier than they actually are, and that’s not always the intent. I’ll speak for myself, when I post snapshots of my life on social media, I don’t intend for things to make it seem like they’re easier than they are, but sometimes they can look that way.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Absolutely.
Matt Holland, DVM: So yeah, I totally hear you there.
Serena Nayee, DVM: You know, even if people may not see it as, ‘oh, it’s easy for them’, they sometimes see it as, ‘oh, they’ve lived the perfect life’, or ‘things worked out for them, it’s not going to work out for me, because I have all these other issues ongoing.’ I know we were talking about this prior to the start of the podcast, but you don’t know what people are going through. You can make all the assumptions that you want, but at the end of the day, you don’t know until you are that person.
Mental Health Struggles in Vet School
Serena Nayee, DVM: For me, I think mental health has been a huge, huge struggle since before I committed to pursuing vet med, basically, since I was a teenager, and it only got harder over time. I’m unsure of how often this happens to other people. I know as a field, we struggle heavily with depression and suicide. Unfortunately, it is very apparent once it happens. Once something severe happens, then we start to pay attention. I think we need to start to pay attention before these things happen, because severe depressive episodes, self-harm, those are all things I struggled with while I was in vet school, while I was in clinics. I would have something like that going on, and then have to go in to medicate a horse or something like that, and just go about the day like it like it never happened. That’s what ends up happening. We bottle it up and just keep going. It’s extremely valuable, it’s hard, but it’s extremely valuable to talk about that before things get really bad. That’s something that I knew going into this that I wanted to talk about as well is this isn’t meant to be like, oh, you know, feel sorry for this person. This is meant to be that these are things that happen every day, and we need to pay attention.
Matt Holland, DVM: It makes me think of a couple things. I was struggling more than I ever had mental health wise last year, and part of what helped me through it, I am not going to say out of it, because it’s a lifelong challenge, but part of what helped me through last year’s valleys were my colleagues. I felt comfortable enough with them to talk openly and freely with what was bothering me. I also felt incredibly lucky and grateful for that because I know that’s not the case for many of us in this profession. They were able to listen. They pretty much dropped what they were doing, and they listened and put me in touch with the people at Vets4Vets, the VIN Foundation resource. They did the same thing. They listened and figured out what I needed and ultimately put me in touch with providers here in the Chicago area that were experts who could diagnose and treat me. It also reminds me of a prior conversation you and I had about how you felt like somewhat supported at Georgia, which is where you went to vet school. Because I don’t think we I don’t think we said that out loud, but you said you felt somewhat supported there, but also somewhat not supported, right?
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of reason for that was having grown up with a different cultural perspective, the lack of diversity, the lack of inclusion. People will do their best to try, but at the end of the day, if we’re not taught about cultural competency, then it can only go so far. I think that was a huge part of me feeling completely isolated and only contributed to worsening mental health was that we didn’t have that kind of representation as much as we should. That’s really something that we need to do better on as well. That’s a big part of why I wanted to start this organization was to enhance the feeling of people being comfortable in their own skin, and it’s staying that way not just on day one, but on their bad days as well.
Founding Chapter VIII
Matt Holland, DVM: Can you both tell us the name of the organization and also the meaning behind the name?
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yes. So, Chapter VIII is an organization I founded it in June of 2020.
Matt Holland, DVM: It’s about to turn one, you should have a party.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah. Yeah. We’re over six months old, which is weird to say. We didn’t actually get nonprofit status, I think, until December so I guess that would be the official founding as a nonprofit. It’s eight as in the Roman numerals, VIII. So, the acronym of the Roman numerals would be Veterinary Inclusion and Intersectionality Initiative. That’s where Chapter VIII comes from.
Matt Holland, DVM: I think that’s really cool.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Thank you, I really appreciate that.
Matt Holland, DVM: It makes you think.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, I really like the number eight, because if you turn it on its side, it’s infinity. The plan is for it to be an infinite concept of greatness. I founded the organization to bring together multiple underrepresented groups in vet med and beyond vet med, too. That’s where the one health perspective comes into it, because obviously vet med isn’t the only field where we have lack of inclusion, lack of intersectionality. So, the goal is to bring together eventually, multiple healthcare groups to enhance inclusion of those who identify as underrepresented that way to better understand how we can enhance accessibility of healthcare, of vet med to those underrepresented groups from a clinical/ non-clinical perspective to diversify career opportunities, to build a community for people to better understand one another’s experiences. Eventually, we want to have opportunities for students, maybe people who aren’t going to school that aren’t students yet, of course professionals as well, so people who may be done with school and are working in the field or working nonclinically to have that community to rely on. If they want to pursue different opportunities, then they’ll have that as a community to go to, but also to share their experiences through art as well as social.
Matt Holland, DVM: Since last June, what would you say, I was going to say most proud of, but that maybe puts a little too much pressure. So, what are you proud of?
Serena Nayee, DVM: We started a merchandise line, and we wanted to have something that reached multiple underrepresented groups as well as enhancing inclusion in all healthcare fields. So, we decided to start a merchandise line that has pronouns on it. They say, like, Doctor they/them, nurse she/her, future doctor he/him. So, it had pronouns in that sense. Also, the Black Lives Matter symbol is on it to enhance inclusion of Black Lives Matter in healthcare. Our goal was to raise at least $250. That way we could match another organization and collaborate on a scholarship. We are working on that at this time, but I believe that we’re going to have a scholarship pretty soon here. That’s in less than six months that we were able to do that. I think that that’s really, really cool, being able to use artistic perspective to bring to science to make people feel more included. We don’t have a scholarship in place yet, but the plan is to eventually build a scholarship to allow for students who are interested in vet med. This was a fundraiser that was done in February. That is Black History Month, and we wanted it to specifically be for a black student pursuing vet med or interested in vet med but still looking for experience to get a better idea of whether or not they truly want to pursue vet med because as we all know, a part of the application of applying to vet school is to gain large animal experience, small animal experience, exotic experience. Not everybody has accessibility to all of those opportunities, and to add on to that a lot of those opportunities are not paid. So, the goal is to allow for students who are somewhat interested in vet med, maybe don’t know, to get a paid experience basically for about two to three weeks and get a better idea of whether or not that is truly something they want to pursue, whether that be in large animal, small animal, public health, government work, research, whatever they desire, as long as it’s within the capacity of vet med to enhance their application.
Matt Holland, DVM: I feel like I keep plugging the VIN Foundation, but this is so relevant. We’ve got Iwanttobeaveterinarian.org and it’s exactly where you’re talking to us, for people who are at the point where they’re considering should I go into vet med? Should I go into something else? What exactly would this look like? For anybody out there who wants to pick our brains, it’s what we do, is help. You can email us with any questions, and we can put you in touch with the right resources and sounds like we’ve got another resource in you.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, definitely.
Matt Holland, DVM: Whether you like it or not you’re on our list now for people who we’re going to tell are experts in applying to vet school.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Perfect, I’m happy to help out in any way I can.
Matt Holland, DVM: I’m thinking you’ve already mentioned when you were talking about research and you said one of the things that drew you to it the most, or stood out the most, was diversity, and in the name of your organization is that word inclusion.
Diversity and Inclusion in Vet Med
Matt Holland, DVM: Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between diversity and inclusion? I think you opened my eyes to it when we talked the first time. How it’s like you really can’t have one without the other, but I’ll let you put it in your words.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yes. I think to truly achieve one you have to achieve the other, and I think that there’s really no power in what the two achieve without having the two coincide. So, much has been focused on diversity. Diversity, from my perspective, is representation of variety. So that’s variety of culture, ethnicity, race, disability status, sexuality, gender, and so much more. That is something that objectively we can get a better idea of in numbers. Inclusion seems like something that’s more subjective, but it’s really not. Inclusion is the amount of comfort that you’re going to feel in a certain situation based on all the factors that a certain environment has ongoing to make you feel that way. So, to truly achieve continuity of diversity, you need inclusion, because there’s no way that you’re going to continue to have that representation unless you have an environment where people are going to feel comfortable to continue to pursue that. You can have diversity all you want for a short period of time, but you’re not going to continuously achieve having a diverse environment without also having an inclusive environment.
Matt Holland, DVM: First of all, I totally agree. Second of all, that makes me think of an institution, like a veterinary school or college, that means well by trying to pay attention to diversity by inviting more underrepresented minorities into their class and offering them spots, but that, in and of itself, doesn’t do enough. Without any inclusion, it doesn’t do anything other than change some bar graphs. It has to be more than just diversity. I guess I wonder what you think about the profession in terms of what it’s doing well, what it could be doing better, where it needs to go? Those big picture questions.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Exactly like what you’re saying, it is very frustrating to see when vet med has these numbers, they see that we’re not as diverse as we can be, and the only goal is to increase numbers. I think that that’s part of the reason why is because like we were talking about earlier, diversity is the easiest, the easiest idea to objectify. It’s something that is so short term minded that it’s eventually just going to fall off. I think that it’s something that you can reach a certain peak, but eventually it’s going to fall off. For that line to keep going up in a positive manner, we need to enhance cultural competency. That’s definitely something that I think we can do better about, including as a component of a curriculum. We have communications courses, a lot of vet schools have communications courses now, which is good, but I think that it’s very one sided in how we need to communicate with people. Just like I think professionalism for a very long time has been very one sided in what is considered professional. At some point, it’s just not fair, because it’s not culturally inclusive. I think that’s something that we definitely need to do as well as increase the diversity in leadership. A lot of vet schools are doing a lot to try to increase the diversity in the classes themselves, but we should also, in order for people to feel included, we should also have diverse people in leadership positions, because then we know, okay, yeah, there is a possibility that we can eventually make it, too. That also offers mentorship opportunities for underrepresented groups where they can feel comfortable enough to go to somebody who has similar experiences to them for mentorship opportunities. I think that we’re getting there. I think that’s getting noticed, but when we have situations where all the deans, or a majority of the deans, in vet schools are not considered to be part of an underrepresented group and the heads of the departments and people in high up in entrepreneurship in vet med, what we see is that there’s a limit to how far we can go, but there isn’t. I think that we need to start to realize that and that’s part of Chapter VIII school too. We’re working on setting up some programs so that we can enhance communication and leadership skills for underrepresented groups so that way we have a pathway for people to eventually get to those positions, and hopefully, eventually be available as mentors in the future.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah, I love what you said near the end there about how it can look like there’s a limit, but there isn’t. This might seem like a total 180, but I’m also reminded of what you said when we first talked about how there’s not a limit to the profession in terms of it doesn’t have to all be about clinical medicine. Like you were talking about how you see the value of things like art and music and being colleagues in those spaces, too. So, not just like a personal hobby, but like sharing those things as veterinarians.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yes, sorry, there’s something that I wanted to state on that in terms of the classical statement of ‘the limit does not exist’, because I think that is true, but I think that there’s also a lot of idealism in that. A third component that I forgot to mention and is very, very important is financial accessibility of vet med, too, in order for people to feel like they will have long term inclusion in the field. So, I think that saying the limit doesn’t exist, yes, in terms of leadership, yes, we should be able to feel like we can make it there, but there’s a lot of factors that are working against underrepresented groups that systemically we also need to appreciate, too. I think that those are two separate concepts that I want to highlight. We have an extremely high debt-to-income ratio, and that really puts people off of vet med as well. Understanding that accessibility to veterinary medical healthcare, as well as accessibility to veterinary medical education, is very much dependent on financial status. That’s something that we also really need to change and really need to address to truly achieve equity in vet med. I want to make those definitions clear. We need to understand that it is possible for us to achieve this, but at the same time, we also need to understand all the factors working against us that are the reasons why we aren’t achieving this. I wanted to add on to that, or I guess, edit what I was trying to say earlier, because I don’t want to seem like a cartoon character.
Matt Holland, DVM: I don’t think you do at all, for whatever that’s worth. No, I agree with what you just said, the access to education, the access to health care, specifically veterinary education, and veterinary health care is very much tied to financial status. What I thought you were going to say next was that’s very much tied to the color of your skin. I wish it weren’t that way, but if you look at wealth in this country, it breaks down pretty clearly, the facts don’t lie there. That’s both important to recognize and address to the extent that we can, and also, and I’m not giving anybody a free pass here, but it’s also a bigger problem than just veterinary medicine.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yes, absolutely.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah. That’s a problem everywhere.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah. That’s where the public health aspect of vet med comes into play is that inevitably, as a field that’s trying to promote public health, we are also promoting the status of systemic health care, and the systemic racism in healthcare, and we need to do a lot better of a job in understanding our role in that, and how we can do better for our black colleagues, for our Latinx colleagues, or our native indigenous colleagues. I know that I’m a person of color, but I still have privilege as an Asian American, and compared to my black colleagues, compared to my Latinx colleagues, or as compared to native indigenous colleagues, and there’s no way to move forward without recognizing what works in my favor and what doesn’t, because there’s also a lot that doesn’t work in my favor. That’s a big part, the financial aspect, of why we need to do better in vet med, as well as the cultural aspect of why we need to do better in vet med.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah, I wish I had a nice note to wrap up this part of the conversation, but I don’t.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, there is none. It’s just not my thing.
Matt Holland, DVM: It’s not. There’s a lot of work to do and it’s going to take a lot of people. The thing that I’ve learned through a couple of different careers and lots of different jobs within those careers, is that, like in any institution I’ve ever been in, whether it’s professional sports, or the United States government, or veterinary medicine, the reason change doesn’t happen is because it’s not important enough to enough important people. We just have to keep shouting politely I guess, but sometimes not politely.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Correct. Yeah, I think we are past the polite shouting now. Unfortunately, a lot of movement forward is dependent on politicizing things that are objectively no longer political, they’re pure racism, and we need to address that.
Matt Holland, DVM: Unfortunately, we’re not going to solve that here.
Serena Nayee, DVM: No, but we can make steps.
Matt Holland, DVM: This is a step by having a conversation, and hopefully people will listen to it. We can grow with a group of people who are interested in it. That’s all you can really ever do. Right? Get a critical mass of people to care about the same thing.
The Role of Art and Music in Vet Med
Matt Holland, DVM: One thing you said in there is about not having limits, and one thing that struck me in our first conversation was you said our profession shouldn’t have limits to just the science side of things, like also the art side. I wonder what you think about that.
Serena Nayee, DVM: I think that was a big part of why we decided to have a merchandise line for Chapter VIII. We have this one set out and we plan to continue to do more on that end.
Matt Holland, DVM: My first shirt is in the mail.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Nice. I’m happy that you ordered. Thank you for doing that.
Matt Holland, DVM: I think it said it was going to take like two months because the mail takes forever these days, but I’m not really going anywhere.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yes, thank you for supporting us. We definitely plan to do a lot more with that. I think that’s an example of how art can be brought to our field to enhance overall inclusion, as well. That’s not the only aspect of it. I think that we can do a lot more with writing, sharing things through writing, sharing things through media, sharing through music. There’s just so much that I think we put away in the name of professionalism in science, and that’s so unnecessary and only hinders us from eventually connecting with people based on our experiences, effectively enhancing inclusion as well. So, I love music, and I definitely plan to do a lot more with it. When I was in school, I met quite a few people who really felt the same way as well. Things like using music to raise money for people who may not have money, or accessibility either, we were talking about in education, or healthcare. Those are all things that we can do. There’s always a way to do something differently. There’s a lot of potential for us to bring that to vet med. So, I would really like to see that in the near future. I think with social media, we have a lot of possibilities, and we’re already doing that in terms of having Instagram live interviews, people coming up with different ways to post things. Posting poetry online about their experiences, all that counts, and it’s all creative ways to better understand how we can do better together.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, you’re talking to a guy who usually posts one haiku a day.
Serena Nayee, DVM: I appreciate your haikus.
Matt Holland, DVM: Oh, thank you.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Of course.
Matt Holland, DVM: We don’t even have to tell the audience that I asked you to say that. Although I guess I just did. No, I totally agree. I used to play trombone in undergrad in high school. Like he said, using music as a fundraiser seems like such an outside the box idea for vet med, for like a group vet med, but it’s not, it’s just music.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yes. I think that reaches a larger problem, too. It’s not just in vet med. If you’re a doctor, or if you’re a scientist, you’re not allowed to do all these other things. That’s what you do, and you have to be serious all the time. It’s not to say you can’t. That being a music fan isn’t serious or anything like that, but that’s what people see it as. Sometimes they think that, oh, that’s just a side hobby that you do, or that’s less important. But, you know, it’s possible that it’s just as important, if not more important. To me, music is probably oftentimes more important, because it helps me achieve self-awareness. While there’s a lot about vet med that I greatly appreciate, I don’t think that it’s helped me achieve the emotional intelligence that music has. I know that’s different for everybody, but we need to recognize that there are so many parts of people, there are so many different parts of their experiences, parts of their personalities, and we need to appreciate all of them, as long as they’re not causing harm to anybody, obviously. There’s just so much potential in recognizing that.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, and I forget who said it, and I forget how it was worded, but I saw a tweet. Most bad stories start that way. I saw a tweet that said, like, thank you to all the artists, actors, musicians, etc. who make all this stuff for a living and who do all this every day, because it’s gotten us through the pandemic. With all the TV shows and movies that we watched and books that we’ve read, if we start to think that that is not important, well, there’s all lot of evidence in the last year that you probably relied on those things to get through the days and nights.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, absolutely.
Final Thoughts and Outro
Matt Holland, DVM: Well, we are just about out of time, but if you would like to leave the audience with one thing, what would it be? It can be more than one thing. You can break the rule.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Leave the audience with one thing? I hope that they have an amazing day.
Matt Holland, DVM: That’s nice.
Serena Nayee, DVM: But yeah, basically, aside from that, I am always open to conversation, and it would be amazing if they would want to be a part of Chapter VIII initiative as well. We’re always happy to accept new members, we are always including new members. Also, if anybody ever has any ideas that they would like to bring to the table, we’re more than open to that as well. So, I would just be happy to meet anybody and everybody that feels they’re able to reach out, and we can go from there.
Matt Holland, DVM: Great. I was going to say if you’ve listened till now, thank you first of all, and we’ll have the links in the Episode Notes, but also, we’ll put all this stuff on social media, too.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Yeah, absolutely. If you can get through all this, thank you so much for listening to us.
Matt Holland, DVM: For anyone interested, we will put both Serena and Chapter VIII’s contact info in the Episode Notes. Before we part ways, is there anything you’d like to say at the very end, Serena?
Serena Nayee, DVM: I just want to thank everybody for taking the time to listen. If they would like to reach out, I’d be happy to open any conversation with them. If they have any ideas to bring to the table about Chapter VIII, we’re always happy to listen to that. We look forward to building a community together.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah, so Serena is happy to listen to you and I hope you are happy to listen to this episode. We will see you next time.
Serena Nayee, DVM: Thank you.
Matt Holland, DVM: Thanks, Serena!
Jordan Benshea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the Episode Notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share a review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINFoundation.org, and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.
