Scholarship awardee Walter Baker shares insights from his first year of veterinary school

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GUEST BIO:

Walter Baker
Walter has been devoted to becoming a veterinarian since seventh grade, and took all of the animal science courses  that were available to him throughout my grade school education. He attended the University of Kentucky for his undergraduate education, and received a Bachelor of Science in animal sciences. As a current second year at Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine, he was fortunate to secure the Kentucky residents’ in-state institution. Walter was one of two recipients of the inaugural Mike Dunn, DVM Veterinary Student Scholarship created by Becky Godchaux. Walter’s goal is to return to rural Kentucky to practice general mixed-animal medicine.

LINKS AND INFORMATION:

• Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine
• Veterinary Information Network (VIN) 3D Anatomy
• Cornell Merlin App

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro

Walter Baker: You ask somebody ahead of you, what’s vet school like, and every time without fail you’ll hear, it’s just like drinking from a fire hose, it’s just so much information all at once. I’m like, okay, that’s not very good for my worries to just get ready for that, and it is to a certain extent, but you can do it. It’s not impossible. Thousands of people have done it before. You’re going to be one of them also.

Jordan Benshea: That is the Mike Dunn, DVM Veterinary Student Scholarship created by Becky Godchaux awardee, Walter Baker, and this is the VIN Foundation’s Veterinary Pulse Podcast. I’m Jordan Benshea, Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Join me as I 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 by individuals like you who donate to the VIN Foundation. Thank you. Please check the episode notes for bio’s, links, and information mentioned. Welcome, Walter. I am very excited to have this podcast experience with you, Walter.

Walter Baker: I’m very glad to be here. It’s an honor.

Jordan Benshea: So as our audience might know, Walter is one of the recipients of the inaugural Mike Dunn, DVM Veterinary Student Scholarship created by Becky Godchaux. Walter has just finished his first year of veterinary school and so we thought this would be a great time to check in with him and see how things are going and learn more about his story and share with our audience and kind of get a fresh perspective on a second year rising, or rising second year. 

Walter’s Journey into Veterinary Medicine

Jordan Benshea: So, Walter, will you share with us sort of your journey into veterinary medicine? Was there an aha moment where you knew you wanted to be a veterinarian or that you knew the profession was right for you? What led you to where you are today? 

Walter Baker: Yes ma’am, of course. I know this is a small animal scholarship, but I was raised on a farm and so I was a beef cattle operation and I helped other farmers, and so I was always in some capacity around veterinarians. I would help process cattle, which are vaccinate and do the yearly boosters and helping dystocia cases and things of that nature, and one day I just kind of had, it just clicked for me, because I was fairly young I was like, this is a very good, valid career option that I can take. So I’ve had a pretty strong conviction to be a veterinarian since about 7th grade, and I just settled on it, and so far it’s working out pretty well.

Jordan Benshea: So where are you now in your veterinary journey?

Walter Baker: I am going into my second year at Auburn University in southern Alabama. It’s, for Kentucky residents, they’re in state institution, so it’s a blessing to get to go there.

First Year Experiences and Challenges

Jordan Benshea: Wonderful, and you’ve just finished your first year and how are you feeling heading into your second year?

Walter Baker: Infinitely better than going into my first year.

Jordan Benshea: In what way?

Walter Baker: Of course any new chapter in your life, there’s anxiety correlated with it because it’s unknown. Well, now I know the campus, going into professional school, it’s a smaller community than undergrad, and so I know the professors, I know the people in my cohort, the cohort ahead of me. So I have more of just an understanding of how everything operates, and I’m married, so my wife has also very well acclimated to the settings there and probably gets along just as well or better with some of my classmates than I do because I’ll be home studying and she’ll be out walking at the dog park with my classmates. So that helps a lot too. So just having that understanding really takes away a lot of the anxiety.

Jordan Benshea: Right, because it’s this huge unknown.

Walter Baker: Yes ma’am.

Jordan Benshea: What’s going to happen? What to expect? How is it going to go? And now you have a little bit more known. There’s still, I’m sure, some unknowns as you head into your second year, but at least there’s a little bit more known.

Walter Baker: Yeah, and very seldom you ask somebody ahead of you, what’s vet school like, and every time without fail you’ll hear, it’s just like drinking from a fire hose, It’s just so much information all at once. I’m like, okay, that’s not very good for my worries to just get ready for that, and it is to a certain extent, but you can do it. It’s not impossible. Thousands of people have done it before. You’re going to be one of them also.

Study Techniques and Balancing Life

Jordan Benshea: So what do you think were some of the tools that helped you get through your first year?

Walter Baker: I did dabble a little bit on the VIN website because of the resources there. I mean, it’s just is huge plethora of information at your fingertips, and specifically there’s, I can’t think of the program’s name, but there’s that, more or less, you can dissect a dog virtually.

Jordan Benshea: 3D anatomy.

Walter Baker: Yeah, and of course anatomy is like the mother bear course for freshman year. The way I actually found out about it, the girl that sits in front of me, I’d see her in class on this like crazy website that’s amazing. Then I looked and I was like, that says VIN, that’s the foundation. So I dabbled on that some. That actually sparked an interest in a handful of my classmates when I discovered that. But also, just generalized textbooks and things of that nature. School will provide you with enough, but sometimes you have to go outside of that to really grasp a good understanding to make it make sense to you.

Jordan Benshea: Do you feel like you found your footing with classmates and getting to know people while still also balancing being married and in a new area?

Walter Baker: Yes, ma’am. Better than I thought I would. I’m not a recluse, like I like talking to people and hanging out with people, but like people outside of our cohort will talk about how strange how we all get along. There’s 131 of us and it’s not really cliquey. We’re liable to go play pickleball and there’ll be a fifth of our entire class on the pickleball courts trying to, and we’re liable to go out to food trucks on Friday night and there’s another group of people going. I mean, you have the ones that you hang out with most of the time, but we all get together and we all have a good time, so it’s really just what you make of it. If you wanna go up to and talk to people, they’re probably going to talk back to you and get along with you. And you said that about being married, of course, prevalently, it’s female, and so my wife has really taken up with 5 or 6 girls in my class.

Jordan Benshea: She’s got a huge friend base now.

Walter Baker: Yeah, and I’ll be, what are you doing tonight? Oh, I’m going to study, what are you doing? She’s, well me and Caroline’s going to walk the dogs and then me and Olivia’s going to go eat tonight. I was like, oh, okay, have fun.

Jordan Benshea: You provided her with her own social circle.

Walter Baker: Yeah, and she’s done better than she or I, either one thought about, because we had anxieties about that, being young and married and then moving 400 miles away, but it’s really worked out.

Jordan Benshea: Wonderful, and what was sort of a lesson that you learned in your first year that you’re hoping to take in your veterinary school experience?

Walter Baker: A good thing that I learned about, of course, and I’ve heard, you have to learn a complete new way of studying compared to undergrad in vet school. And I would rewrite every lecture for every exam, and that was taking just a silly amount of time. I’d study 20 hours rewriting lecture material for each exam. So of course everything after COVID has went virtual, so we have all of our slide decks on PowerPoint, and so now I lean more towards just annotating the slide decks and rewriting the main big picture things, and that’s really helped expedite the learning experience and my ability to retain it, because whenever I was rewriting everything I was getting it just snapping my fingers, but also, I mean, it just wasn’t worth it.

Jordan Benshea: That’s a good learning tool to learn.

Walter Baker: Yes, ma’am.

Jordan Benshea: Were there any other things in your first year that you just, in hindsight, now think, oh wow I can do this more efficiently, or I learned this, or I was nervous about this and it turned out to be not as much of an issue?

Walter Baker: Yes, ma’am. Of course, whenever I first started, I had all these anxieties about exams and of course that doesn’t go away, but it lessened because I would start studying a week, week and a half prior. Whenever we came into our last round of exams, our finals this semester, we was doing three exams every week, so Monday, Wednesday, Friday we were doing exams, and so I went from, alright, I have a week and a half to prepare to I have a day and a half. And that really helped prove to me, okay, it’s really daunting and there is a lot of work to be put in, but I can come down to the wire, retain enough information to be able to perform well enough on an exam to get an A in the class. That helped me because going into our second year, it’s like that for most of the first semester, there’s two exams a week, and so it’s going to be cut back a little bit, but at least I know I have the ability to study in that short amount of time enough information.

Jordan Benshea: So you’ve really learned a lot of studying techniques that are setting you up for success and helping you be more efficient with your time.

Walter Baker: Yes ma’am, and that’ll probably correlate over into practice too. I mean, you can’t dwell 30-45 minutes on every case that comes in that day. Sometimes you have to expedite and still practice good medicine, it’s a balancing act.

Summer Break and Work Experience

Jordan Benshea: So how are you spending your summer between your first and second year?

Walter Baker: Well, for the last I don’t know how many summers I’ve worked two or three jobs and coming back this summer, I’m like, I want to have a little bit of free time, so I’m just working the one job. I work about 45-47 hours a week, and other than that I’m home, I’ll go fishing, I’ll help out on the farm. I have a small farm I’ve got at least myself and I’ll tend to that, and then our family farm, so just enjoying myself being with family.

Jordan Benshea: Yeah, and what sort of work are you doing during that time?

Walter Baker: I work with a, work for not with a veterinarian that graduated Auburn in 1980.

Jordan Benshea: In his clinic? 

Walter Baker: Yes ma’am. It’s just a single practitioner clinic, mixed animals. He actually saw a cockatiel 2 or 3 days ago. We did a Turkey yesterday, just, I mean, anything and everything except snakes.

Jordan Benshea: So what are you noticing or do you notice a difference in being there now after going through a year of veterinary school versus this time last summer?

Walter Baker: He practices medicine on a much higher level than I previously was aware of.

Jordan Benshea: What do you mean by a higher level?

Walter Baker: Well, I don’t know, I just, I was not nearly as versed in veterinary medicine than I was going into. So I’d see him do something, I think I just kind of would catch my eye a little funny because I was, for lack of better term, ignorant to the veterinary medicine. And then I come back, I’m like, for him to be 45 years out of school, he’s still very kind of cutting edge, and of course, that’s part of the oath is to yourself to study medicine and he’s done well by it.

Jordan Benshea: Do you think that he’s noticed differences in you?

Walter Baker: Seems to. He’s always kind of let me have a loose chain as far as what he would allow me to do and ask his questions and stuff, and he’s lengthening that rope out, still within respect of what’s good and what’s not good. Slowly, there’s more responsibilities being added to my plate and I greatly appreciate that in him allowing that to happen.

Jordan Benshea: And it’s great that you’re able to get this experience summer after summer because you’re able to learn from him and then he’s able to see you as you learn and grow in the profession.

Walter Baker: Yes, ma’am. He never had any grandchildren. He had four children of his own, but none of them pursued veterinary medicine. So, I don’t know if we’re really that close, but I mean, we do share a deeper connection than I have with my previous bosses. We talk about things outside of work, if we’re restoring vehicles and things of that nature, and he’ll take me with him after hours to go on long farm calls and that’s enjoyable because you catch a man outside of work, he’s generally a different person. It’s like the stress isn’t on his shoulders as much. So I really enjoy our conversations and how close we’ve grown the past 5 years in my working with him.

Jordan Benshea: What a great opportunity.

Walter Baker: Yes, ma’am.

Jordan Benshea: Are there other doctors in the practice or just him?

Walter Baker: Just him. He’s had associates down through the years, but it’s just him now, and that is something I’m glad I’ve gotten to see because he’s been on call for emergencies and everything 7 days a week for the last however many years and he still loves medicine and he is not burned out on it. But I can kind of look at that and see it and think, I know that’s going to be my life to a certain extent, but I don’t want it to be as great that as an extent as it’s in his life. Practice hard, fulfill your duties, help your patients and your clients, but you need to have some availability at home and hobbies and whatnot.

Jordan Benshea: Yeah, it’s always tough finding a balance.

Walter Baker: Yes, ma’am. Yeah.

Impact of the Scholarship

Jordan Benshea: How do you think being a recipient of the Mike Dunn Veterinary Student Scholarship has impacted your first year of veterinary school?

Walter Baker: Something that I’m very passionate about is personal finances and it really intrigues me, and so I guarantee the first billing cycle, as soon as I seen that hit my student loans, I would be pulling hairs out thinking, how can I get ahead of this already? And I just know there’s no way to get ahead of such a huge bill, so being able to be relieved of that stress has helped my life, helped my ability to study and learn medicine more so than just being nervous and worried all the time. It’s helped my interpersonal relationships in my marriage because, I mean, it just relieved a great deal of stress. I know it has. I have a family member that’s a medical doctor and so I told him whenever I received the scholarship because I knew he would get it more so than other people because the great deal of expense that comes with medical school, and the way he put it really hit home. He said, “you’ll never have to know the full extent to which you appreciate this scholarship because you’ll never have to pay the full bill,” and that really opened my eyes to it. I mean, I can’t express how grateful I am for Miss Godchaux and the VIN Foundation. It’s a sincere blessing.

Jordan Benshea: Well, we’re excited to support you on this journey and beyond.

Walter Baker: Thank you.

Advice for Incoming Veterinary Students

Jordan Benshea: What advice would you give to veterinary students who are about to start their first year in fall of 2025?

Walter Baker: I heard it a lot coming in to like orientation names, the second years that were talking to us at the time, they were like, take a day or find time to do something different not related to veterinary medicine. It kind of fell on deaf ears to be honest, because I thought I’m going to hit it hard, I’m just not going to be tired, and what an arrogant thing to think because you do get tired and you get to the point where you almost have a cold because you’re tired. So find time, it is a lot of work and you do need to put the work in, but find time to go fishing or read a book. I’ve discovered I like reading, which is crazy because you do a lot of reading anyways at vet school, but like I’m trying…

Jordan Benshea: Different type of reading.

Walter Baker: Yeah. I read the James Harriet novels. I read the first, I started on the third one and kind of got burned out on it, but I’m trying to work my way through CS Lewis’s theological collection and found out I really like reading, or go eat with some friends, take some time to enjoy yourself. Not too much time. Don’t fail, but enjoy your time.

Jordan Benshea: I think that’s great advice, and is there anything else as you’re heading into your second year that you think, I kind of wish I had known this, or I think this would be helpful, or sort of best practices that you kind of wish you had known going in?

Walter Baker: Don’t rewrite everything on every lecture slide. That was just silly of me. That’s the biggest advice because yeah.

Jordan Benshea: Okay, don’t rewrite everything. 

Personal Interests and Reflections

Jordan Benshea: Do you have a secret talent or something you enjoy doing that others might not know about?

Walter Baker: Yeah, because I just recently discovered this in me, I really enjoy birdwatching.

Jordan Benshea: There you go.

Walter Baker: It’s not really a talent or anything, but I won’t go off and look like out of a postcard. I won’t be in lace up boots and short shorts out in the middle of a national forest, but I’ll be sitting on the back porch there at Auburn. Everybody down there lives in house trailers, and I’ll be sitting there on my house trailer porch and be looking like, oh, that’s a Eastern Mountain Blue Bird or an Eastern Phoebe or anything. It’s interesting because usually you just see a bird and you think, oh, that’s a songbird, but now being able to be like, oh, well that’s this type of bird, generally it does this and this and this, and that’s interesting to me.

Jordan Benshea: So do you use binoculars?

Walter Baker: Yeah, I guess I’m a nerd. I’m in vet school, I’m a nerd.

Jordan Benshea: I think being a nerd is great.

Walter Baker: I do too. I enjoy it. Everybody, my wife’s family, they’re just like, why do you know all these random facts? I’m like, I don’t know. I really don’t.

Jordan Benshea: And do you use the Merlin app or do you look at a book?

Walter Baker: That’s what got me into it. I was listening to the Meat Eater podcast, it’s a hunting podcast, and they were really endorsing the Merlin app, and it kind of fell on deaf ears and one day just, I was like, I wonder if it’s that cool because you can hit the record button and supposedly it can listen to 3 or 4 different birds going.

Jordan Benshea: It’s so cool.

Walter Baker: I mean, it just was mindboggling. I was like, whoa. And like the Eastern Phoebe, I was like, what in the world is a Phoebe? Now going into work, there’s one at the house next to our clinic and I heard it the first day this week and I thought, that sounds like an Eastern Phoebe, and I pulled up the Merlin app and it pulled it up. I thought, oh, okay.

Jordan Benshea: That’s awesome.

Walter Baker: Yeah.

Final Thoughts and Outro

Jordan Benshea: Well, Walter, I really appreciate your time. Is there anything else you wanna leave our audience with today?

Walter Baker: No, I’m just very grateful to be here. I was actually sitting on the couch last night and I looked at Debbie and I was like, I set all my notepad and stuff down, I said does it, it’s just odd, it hits me sometimes that like, this is my life, like I’m in vet school, I’m here and I got this scholarship. It sounds cliche, like, oh, I feel like I’m dreaming, but like it never felt like this should have happened to me, like, I don’t deserve this at all and I’m so appreciative and so thanks.

Jordan Benshea: Well, we’re really excited to support you throughout your veterinary career and and we’re excited to see you on your journey. It seemed like doing a podcast like this and checking in with you at the end of each year and kind of following, we will continue to follow Walter’s story and you all will be able to continue to tune in. And we’re just excited to support you, Walter, as you continue on. So thanks so much for joining us for this podcast. We really appreciate it.

Walter Baker: Thank you. I appreciate it.

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.