Tune in as we chat with Kamira Patel, a 3rd-year veterinary student at UC Davis. Kamira shares her veterinary school application strategy, how she narrowed her choices based on priorities, and her unexpected favorite part of veterinary school.
In this episode we mention the following resources:
- Kamira’s blog post on Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) tips: https://vinfoundation.org/veterinary-school-multiple-mini-interview-mmi-tips/
- School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis: https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/
- APVMA (American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association): https://www.apvma.org/index.html
- Student Doctor Network pre-veterinary forum: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/forums/pre-veterinary.73/
- VIN Foundation Vet School Bound: https://vetschoolbound.org/applysmarter/
- VIN Foundation Cost of Education Map: https://vetschoolbound.org/how-much-will-my-veterinary-education-cost/
- VIN Foundation Vet School Bound:https://vetschoolbound.org/
- Vets4Vets® https://vinfoundation.org/vets4vets
You may learn more about the VIN Foundation, on the website, or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
If you like this podcast, we would appreciate it if you subscribe, rate, and share. As always, we welcome feedback. If you have an idea for a podcast episode, we’d love to hear it!
TRANSCRIPT
Intro
Jordan Benshea: Welcome to the Veterinary Pulse podcast. My name is Jordan Benshea. I’m the executive director of the VIN Foundation. Veterinary Pulse is the heartbeat of the profession. Join us as we talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics, from student debt to mental health, and share stories. Stories connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible through individual donors like yourself, and our technology partnership with VIN, the Veterinary Information Network. Thank you for being here.
Meet Kamira Patel: A Third-Year Veterinary Student
Jordan Benshea: This episode, we’re having a discussion with Kamira Patel, a third-year veterinary student at UC Davis. She shares her veterinary school application strategy, how she narrowed her choices based on priorities, and her unexpected favorite part of veterinary school so far. Thank you for listening. Hi, Kamira, thanks so much for being with us today.
Kamira Patel: Thank you for having me.
Jordan Benshea: I like to start with everybody and ask what was your first introduction to the VIN Foundation?
Kamira Patel: Yeah, specifically for the VIN Foundation, I would say I was introduced by my work with VIN, with the Cost of Education and Student Debt project, but I have been using regular VIN for so many years now being in veterinary school. Especially in the last six months with COVID, because there’s so many resources with VIN. For example, procedural videos which has been really helpful for me recently as I’m trying to prepare for my junior surgeries, and everything like that. Now that I’ve been able to explore more, VIN foundation, there’s so many resources for pre-veterinary students as well, which is great.
Jordan Benshea: Wonderful! Yes, we’re thrilled to have you on our team helping with the VIN Foundation Cost of Education map and the Student Debt Center. It’s great to get a student’s perspective because we think we might be doing a good job, but it’s all irrelevant if the students feel otherwise. We’re very grateful for your help, and we’re thrilled to have you working with us.
Kamira Patel: Absolutely. I love it. I love it so far. It’s fantastic.
Kamira’s Journey to Veterinary School
Jordan Benshea: When did you first realize you wanted to be a veterinarian?
Kamira Patel: I would say I am a cliche in the sense that I wanted to be a veterinarian since I was little. I didn’t grow up with a lot of animals in my household. My dad didn’t really like animals to begin with, so I never had a pet dog until I was in college. My parents joked with me that I really wanted to become a veterinarian just because I was deprived of animals as a child, but really, that’s not the case. I just used outside opportunities to gain experience with animals. I started working at the Folsom City Zoo Sanctuary at a young age, and that was when I really started getting that passion for animals and helping animals because all of those animals are specifically either illegally kept or injured. So, it is a sanctuary. I saw where humans are responsible for these animals, and it really spurred my interest in in the area.
Jordan Benshea: How old were you when you started volunteering at the zoo?
Kamira Patel: I was pretty young, actually. I would say 13 was when I was officially volunteering through a program called the zoo ambassador program. It was to allow younger kids to volunteer and start getting that experience because you can’t be a volunteer until you’re 16. I was able to do it earlier because of that program and that was fantastic for me.
Jordan Benshea: What a great opportunity. It seems like that’d be wonderful. I wonder if zoos elsewhere have that as well or maybe it was just specific because of the sanctuary aspect of it.
Kamira Patel: I’m not sure but it would be something that would be interesting to look into honestly and helpful for others that want to pursue that interest.
Jordan Benshea: You knew from a young age that you want to be a veterinarian.
Application Strategies and Challenges
Jordan Benshea: Will you share your path in applying to veterinary school and what that looked like for you?
Kamira Patel: Absolutely. I started looking at specific schools that I would be interested in and their requirements my first year of college. I met with the animal science director of my major, and she worked very closely with the director of admissions at UC Davis veterinary school, so I was working closely with her and trying to build my course load based on what UC Davis or other veterinary schools would require as I apply. There were some schools, I x’ed off of my list because I didn’t want to do the more difficult organic chemistry, or I didn’t want to do a public speaking class. I didn’t have any sort of feelings about or connections more for the school, so just crossed those off my list pretty quickly. The summer of my senior year of college was when I applied to veterinary schools using the VMCAS application. I had lined up all my letters of recommendation and gave those people specific dates that I wanted to have the letters of recommendation done by. That was because I personally wanted to finish my application in July and not wait until September 15th when it was due. I heard a lot of horror stories about students who got their application done, they sent it in very close or on September 15th, and there was a problem with their application and because it was after the due date, their application was voided. So, I was very concerned that that was going to happen to me, and I would have a problem with my application, so I planned for that, to have a buffer period, so that I could fix anything that would come up with my application. I think that’s an important thing that a lot of people don’t necessarily consider when applying is because they’re getting all these applications as September 15th is coming closer, and they have to review those to make sure that you have all your requirements and that you put in all of your courses correctly, which is a feat in itself, I will have to say. So, they really do get impacted, honestly, the review process as it gets closer to September 15th and that’s something that people don’t really think about.
Jordan Benshea: That’s a good point. I like how you added that buffer for yourself, almost two months, really. Right?
Kamira Patel: Yeah, and it did come in very handy because there was an issue with one of my letters of recommendation. I wasn’t able to get that one in in time, so I was very happy that I had that buffer because that really did help me in the end.
Jordan Benshea: Did you have any concerns that you might think afterwards, “Oh, my gosh, I wish I had done this differently!” or that you had more time to kind of third, fourth, fifth draft anything? I think that’s maybe what I would have been thinking. I might want that extra time for a few more drafts. Did you have that sense, or were you just confident in what you were providing?
Kamira Patel: I was confident with what I was providing. I had started preparing pretty early regarding the personal statements. I felt that I had worked so much on those, sometimes it gets to the point where you’re rewriting, rewriting, you’re rewriting, and you’re not making it any better, so I just decided, you know what, this is good. This expresses myself, and I’m going to go for it.
Jordan Benshea: I think that sounds like a great strategy that worked very well. What resources did you find helpful as you were applying to veterinary school?
Kamira Patel: I would say that being a UC Davis undergraduate student was extremely helpful for me, specifically for getting into Davis’ veterinary school. However, their knowledge about vet school and the application process in general was extremely helpful. They had an Academic Advising Center, which helped me organize my coursework, and they even provided me with a list of all of the courses that are required by all of the veterinary schools. It was very easy for me to check off which ones I’ve already completed and which ones I needed to complete and organize my four years and my course load based on that. That was invaluable, honestly. They also had a pre-health Advising Center at UC Davis. That was extremely helpful, because that allowed me to meet with the director of admissions at the UC Davis veterinary medicine school. She gave a presentation about how to get into UC Davis that was fantastic. She really did just lay it out. She basically said you need to have this number of hours for veterinary experience, you need to have this score for your GRE, and you need to have at least a three point whatever for your GPA. Then she really kind of went into the MMI process and there are so many different ways of doing them. When I say MMI, I mean multiple mini interviews. Having her explain what Davis’ process was, was very helpful. That same pre-health Advising Center gave a practice MMI for students who were applying to vet school and that was great, too. Oh, my gosh, I can’t say how great that was. It was just a very good practice for me to see how I would do in that sort of setting.
Jordan Benshea: Absolutely. Being an undergrad at UC Davis, knowing that you wanted to go to UC Davis, did you end up applying to other schools or did you only end up applying to UC Davis? If you can, tell us a little bit about how that path worked for you?
Kamira Patel: I initially had applied to eight schools. When I say applied, I didn’t finish the application process for all those eight schools, but I had filled out the application on VMCAS and I was ready to go if I wanted to. As I was getting closer to the date that I had assigned in my head to finish the application, I was realizing that I really, really wanted to go to UC Davis to the point that if I didn’t get into UC Davis, I would just apply again the next cycle. That made me realize that I didn’t want to spend all of this money for the application fees when I knew I was just going to do it all over again if I didn’t get into UC Davis. I ended up only applying to Davis, and it was very much all my eggs in one basket deal. It was very scary for me because I am one to have a lot of backups ready to go in case something goes wrong. I like to be prepared, so putting everything I had out there and hoping for the best was something that was very scary for me, but I’m really glad I did that because I saved a lot of money with the application process.
Jordan Benshea: You mentioned saving money by applying to just UC Davis. How did finances overall play in your consideration when choosing a veterinary school?
Kamira Patel: Initially, I didn’t really consider the finances when choosing schools to apply to. However, as I was finishing up applications in VMCAS, you get a total of how much it’s going to be to apply to various schools and I was noticing that it definitely swayed my opinion about what I wanted to do. I also noticed how much money I was going to save by going to UC Davis as a California resident versus a private university. That was something that really started the process of ‘x’ing out all the other schools and just applying to Davis, because there was a huge deficit between the two regarding tuition. I know that coming out of veterinary school, most are coming out with $152,000 in debt and going to a private university would add on to that. That’s something that I started becoming very aware of as I was continuing my application process, so that was another reason why I only applied to UC Davis in the end because the money I would save in the future was so much that I felt it was worth applying and taking that risk.
Jordan Benshea: Were there other factors that you considered when choosing a veterinary school as well?
Kamira Patel: Location was a big one for me. I’m definitely a California girl, so the idea of going to Ithaca, New York was something that I wasn’t really looking forward to. Also, my family and my significant other are close to me. I didn’t really want to pick up everything and move both me and my significant other to another place because there was a consideration about his career as well. Not that that was the only reason why I stayed in Davis, but that was something that I wanted to consider because it was important to me. I think I was very lucky to have gone to UC Davis undergrad and extremely lucky to have gone into UC Davis vet school and not had to go through that crazy process of trying to pick up your whole life and move. Location was a big one for me.I also considered where I would be the happiest studying. I did look at some of the campuses and facilities, and I honestly fell in love with the UC Davis vet med campus. It’s so beautiful. It’s also one of the only two vet schools in the US that allowed dogs on campus. I could not tell you, or I could not express how much having people bring their pets to school and having them play at lunch, really does help with your peace of mind. I’m going to be honest, veterinary school is really stressful, and just having all these dogs around you, it helps, it really does. I’m very happy at this specific campus, and that was something I was considering when applying. The last thing that really was important to me was that Davis has a strong mental wellness program. That was another thing that really drew me to UC Davis, because I had heard a lot about some other veterinary schools being notorious for stress and mental health. I knew that that was going to be important for me as I moved on with my career since we do have the highest suicide rate in this profession. I wanted to make sure that I had the resources available to me if for some reason I needed them, just because this profession is very stressful, and a lot of veterinarians do suffer from compassion fatigue, and moral stress, etc. That was something that I wanted to have as a support.
Jordan Benshea: I think those are great things to consider when you’re choosing a veterinary school. Since you mentioned the mental wellbeing, I want to make sure everyone knows that if anyone’s struggling or feeling stressed, overwhelmed, please know you’re not alone. The VIN Foundation does have a free resource called Vets4Vets. It’s confidential support, peer to peer, and it’s free for veterinary students and veterinarians. If anyone needs help, we’re available. It’s tangible one on one support. Unfortunately, the two, I would say critical factors in the veterinary profession or two of the most critical factors are mental health and student debt. They definitely do play off of each other and almost to an extent encourage each other. We really want to do everything we can to support veterinary students and veterinarians at every stage in their career.
Interview Preparation and Experience
Jordan Benshea: I want to backtrack for a moment because you mentioned that you have the ability to practice MMIs and I want to, for our listeners, if you can describe what the different interview options there are for veterinary school, how the interview process works in general for veterinary school, and then if you wouldn’t mind diving into a little bit your experience with your UC Davis interview.
Kamira Patel: Absolutely. There are a lot of different types of interviews that schools can have when you’re applying. The most common one that I’ve seen is the panel interview where you have maybe two or three professionals or faculty members that will interview you, asking you questions about your experiences, your application, what opportunities you’ve had in your life, etc. That’s your classic interview style. What I’ve noticed is that there’s been a shift recently towards the MMI style, which is the multiple mini interviews, because it is what medical schools use. The MMI is designed to be more scenario based and really focus on how you do in a high stress, how you perform, I’m sorry, in a high stress situation, and how you form your thoughts and your opinions, and how you present them. I think the biggest difference between the two, panel interview and MMI, is that the MMI is difficult to prepare for fully. There are things that you can do, which I can go into a little bit of what I did, but there’s no way that you’re going to know the types of questions that you’re going to be asked. Whereas for a panel interview, you can kind of guess that there’s going to be the basic, what adversities have you faced, describe a time that you failed and what did you learn from that, etc. So, you can have those prepared in the back of your mind.For me for the MMI, I think I found out in October that I had received an invitation to interview at Davis, and their interviews are held in December during our undergraduate finals week. That was something I had to prepare for ahead of time, because I realized, great, I’m going to have my interview for vet school, and I’m going to be going through my finals. This is not fantastic timing, but oh, well. I scheduled my interview on the only day that I didn’t have a final and I chose the 8am to 10am slot because I knew I can psych myself out pretty well, so I didn’t want to have to wait all day to do my interview. I just wanted to get it done and over with. I think that’s something important that students should remember as they are getting those invitations back, is try to choose a time if you can, that will allow you to be at your best. That’s something that I tried to do for me. I did some preparation before the interview. I know that some people think I did a ton of preparation, but really, I had the mentality that the school is assessing me as a person and I can’t change myself, so I’m not going to stress about it too, too much. Yes, I’m going to try to equip myself with some tools to strengthen my interview skills, but I wasn’t going to prepare for specific interview questions. As I mentioned earlier, the pre-health Advising Center had a mock MMI that they organized with current veterinary students to act as the interviewers and that was by far the most helpful resource I had for preparing for the interview because I got to practice two scenarios with a veterinary student in full business attire. I got their feedback on my answers and where my strengths and weaknesses are and that was invaluable. Honestly, it really helped me understand where I can improve and what I had to make sure to refrain myself from doing. For example, using filler words or fidgeting during my answers. I use my hands a lot when I talk and one of the veterinary students told me, it’s great that you’re so expressive, but it is a little distracting sometimes when you use your hands. That was really important for me, because I had to sit on my hands a little bit more and try not to be so distracting with them as I answered my questions. That in itself was a huge resource for me. I would say that that was where I learned the most and prepared the most, but that was only one day and I didn’t necessarily go out and look on all the different websites to see all the different possible scenarios that medical schools ask or practice questions, just because I tried to remind myself that they’re looking at you as a person and your personality. That’s something that you can’t really change. I just wanted to get an idea of how the interview was and take it as it came.
Jordan Benshea: Gosh, it seems like that UC Davis, again, has so many great resources for you as a pre-veterinary student. Do you know of other veterinary schools that do that sort of mock MMI?
Kamira Patel: I am not sure, but I would definitely recommend students to ask their advising centers. There’s a lot of great opportunities at schools and resources at schools that a lot of students don’t avail themselves to and I think I was one of the few that really did look into those resources. I do recommend wholeheartedly that students look at what their colleges have and what resources they have, because they might have a lot more than you initially thought. I would say, I’m almost certain that they have a lot more than you initially thought.
Jordan Benshea: Taking advantage of resources that are available to you, I think can be sometimes tricky even knowing where to start. Do you have any recommendations or suggestions for a pre-veterinary student that doesn’t know where to start to look for resources? Did you spend time on the APVMA Facebook page, or Student Doctor Network pre-veterinary forum, or what were the areas that you gathered information from?
Kamira Patel: I looked at Student Doctor Network. That was helpful just to get an idea of where everybody was, and I started, honestly, by making connection with my director of my program. My major was animal science, so obviously, that’s very related to veterinary medicine. That’s where it helps me, but any person in the advising center, I mean, every school has an Academic Advising Center, so anybody in there will have papers, handouts, and lists of different resources. That’s a really great place to start, honestly, is the Academic Advising Center, and they can point you towards this specific area, or this specific resource that you could find helpful. I would recommend starting there.
Jordan Benshea: It seems like you had a lot of your ducks in a row as you applied to veterinary school. Of the different aspects of the application for veterinary school, what did you find to be the most challenging, or the one that you struggled with the most?
Kamira Patel: I think that there were two areas where I felt I had a little bit of a harder time with. The first area was my letters of recommendation, and the second area was my personal statement. Let’s start with the letters of recommendation. Everybody is apprehensive about asking for letters of recommendation, at least I am. The difficult part about applying to all the different schools, there are different requirements for different schools regarding the letters of recommendation. Some schools will require you to have two veterinarians write recommendations for you, and the third one you can choose whoever. While other schools like UC Davis required one vet to write your recommendation, and I believe they required an academic professor to write a recommendation and the third one was up to you. I struggled with that a little bit because UC Davis undergrad is very large, so building a relationship with a faculty member is challenging because you’re in a class of 500 students. That was something that I knew I would have to have a recommendation from an academic professor, so I really did have to lay down some groundwork to build some relationships. I found it harder to do that in a bigger school, and that might be something that other students will find a little bit difficult if they are at other schools that are larger, but it is important. I do recommend that because it does give your letters of recommendation some brevity. The second thing that was difficult for me it was the personal statements. That was because it takes a lot of self-reflection, you have to kind of brag about yourself a little bit in your essays. That’s just something that I don’t know, really, it doesn’t come easily to me. I don’t like thinking about how did this experience help me, and what did I learn, and all that kind of stuff. A lot of the questions were ‘where do you see yourself in five years?’ and at least for me, there are a lot of unknowns about your future, so trying to nail down exactly what you want to do and where you want to be in five years is a little bit difficult. I mean, I had ideas for myself, but trying to express that in only 100 words, is crazy. That was really hard was that a lot of the personal statements have that word limit and I’m one that likes to use a lot of words, so trying to cut it down was just so difficult. Those were the two areas, the letters of recommendation and the personal statements, where I did struggle a bit with that.
Jordan Benshea: It’s great that you share that, I really appreciate that. Hopefully, that’ll help other pre-veterinary students. I thought you were going to say the interview is just based on your blog post and you did such a great job with your blog post. We’ll have that link in the Episode Notes. We’ll also include the link to the APVMA Facebook page and website as well as the Student Doctor Network pre-veterinary forum, and other resources that Kamira is mentioning in this episode in the Episode Notes.
Overcoming Adversity: Kamira’s Personal Story
Jordan Benshea: What sort of adversity did you face on your path to veterinary school and what did you learn from that?
Kamira Patel: My first year of college, I had a spontaneous tension pneumothorax, which is a fancy way of saying that my lung collapsed on me spontaneously and my heart was in danger of being displaced. I had to go into emergency surgery. I was in the ICU for five days on a morphine pump and I ended up missing my first round of finals for college. It was the first quarter of college, and it was right around finals and it ended up that I missed them.
Jordan Benshea: How scary!
Kamira Patel: It was very scary.
Jordan Benshea: And to be dealing with that in your first finals in college! Oh my gosh! So hard.
Kamira Patel: Yeah, it was pretty terrifying. It taught me a lot, but I think the difficult part was really, during winter break. I was recovering and trying to wean off all of the pain medication I was on slowly as I was trying to study for my finals, which I’d have to take the first week back at school after winter break. That was hard for me because of the amount of medication I was on and how it really did affect my mental faculties, making it pretty difficult for me to study. The recovery from my lung surgery didn’t end when I was healed physically because my immune system was absolutely shot after that. For the next three years, I was constantly getting sick, and I’d get these weird, rare viruses. I contracted Bell’s Palsy where half of my face was paralyzed for a month. It was just constant medical struggle after the surgery, and some PTSD as well. I’d say the biggest thing that I learned from that was no matter who you are, your health is vital, and it can really affect the path that you see yourself going on. I could have easily been derailed by that experience, but it put some perspective in my life because I think young people feel invincible. You take your health for granted if you haven’t had issues as a child, so when that is suddenly taken away, it’s kind of like a wakeup call, honestly.
Jordan Benshea: Wow, Kamira, I’ve been working with you for a couple months and I had no idea. There’s a quote that I think about quite often, which has been credited to Plato. It says, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” I think about that so often because everybody that you meet and engage with, obviously a lot less during this pandemic, but even on Zoom or on phone calls, etc., you really have no idea what somebody’s journey is, and you have no idea what they’re going through. I think that’s a perfect example, like your story and you’re sharing and thanks so much for being willing to share and open up about that. That’s such a great lesson. I’m so sorry that you went through that. I kind of got goosebumps just thinking about that, because it’s so hard as an undergrad to be going through something like that. At the same time, everybody has their struggles, right? Everyone has things that they are struggling with, and that other people don’t know about. Understanding and building resilience in yourself is vital. I think it’s vital for succeeding in life. I think it’s vital for succeeding in this veterinary profession and having a successful veterinary career because there’s always going to be things that come up. How you deal with those things really determines how you will move forward in your life across the board, personally, professionally, etc. Thank you so much for sharing that story with us. I think that’s a very, very good tip and story and great advice for pre-veterinary students, and really anybody. What would you say is one piece of helpful advice you would give to pre-veterinary students based on your experience? It’s possible you would say resilience based on what you just said. Is there something else? I’d love to hear it. I’d love for our listeners to hear it.
Kamira Patel: I think one thing I’d like to share is that, while veterinary school does, and it does kind of feed back to my adversity I guess you could say, but yes, vet school does seem like the end all be all, but if it doesn’t work out the first time, there’s so many other opportunities. You can apply again, you can reach out to the schools and ask what was wrong with your application, and what can you do better. Some schools will give you feedback about that. I think that’s something that people lose sight in their mind about. That you don’t just get one shot, and as scary as this process is, whatever happens, it’s supposed to happen, and you’re going to learn from it. So, putting that out there in the beginning, I think is important. I do recommend doing a lot of research about the schools and start having idea somewhat early on, about where you would want to see yourself and maybe pick a reach school. When I say a reach school, a school that is pretty difficult to get into, but you really do want to go there. Pick that reach school and try to get your grades, your GRE scores, and your veterinary experience on par with what they require and what they want. For example, when I was applying for Davis, I was looking at what the average GRE scores were, and what are the requirements for the GRE scores. The requirements are a lot lower than what averages were for the applicants applying, so I told myself I’m going to try to get the average because I want to be the best applicant that I can possibly be. That was something that I was trying to do, was get my GRE scores in line with what the averages were for UC Davis, so I think that’s something that you can do to give yourself a goal. It gives you a path as you’re navigating all this craziness with applying. For me at least, it gave me a path of this is what I need to do, and this is what I’m going to try to strive for. That helped me a lot. The last thing I would say would be try to get as much experience in a variety of places. I know that’s really hard to do right now with COVID and the sheltering in place, etc., but in the coming years if it is possible, getting experienced in different workplaces, in different environments is really helpful. For example, I was all about horses at the beginning of college. I knew I was going to be a horse vet. I was going to only do horses. Like that was my thing. I decided halfway through college that I needed to get some small animal experience to really round out my application. I fell in love with the small animal hospital setting. That’s what I’m going to do now, being in vet school I’ve decided it’s small animals, for sure.
Jordan Benshea: It’s great when we have this vision of ourselves doing something and then we do it and find out, not so much. You just never know it unless you try it. You’ve got to give yourself that opportunity to experience it because you might have a completely different reaction.
Kamira Patel: Absolutely.
Balancing Relationships and Veterinary School
Jordan Benshea: You mentioned a couple times that you have a significant other, and that was one of the reasons that you wanted to go to UC Davis. Can you talk a little bit, if you’re up for it, about how being in a relationship going into veterinary school has impacted the veterinary school experience or how being in a relationship is while you’re in veterinary school understanding that it is a stressful time? There’s a lot of constraints on your time, and a lot of pressure, etc.
Kamira Patel: I would say, applying to veterinary school and keeping in mind that I do want to stay with my significant other, it was a little stressful at times. I was considering going to London, or Great Britain for the Royal Veterinary College there. I took a trip with my significant other over there to visit the school because for a while I was thinking that’s where I wanted to go. My father grew up in Great Britain and I love it there. That was a little bit scary for him at least, my significant other, because the idea of moving across seas is a little scary for him. We ended up visiting and it’s a great school, but I realized this is not for me. I think it was helpful, including him in the process and it ended up working out great for us, but it was scary at times. We did have a lot of conversations about would you follow me? Is that something you’re comfortable with? Are you okay with long distance relationships, if that’s something you’d want to do, etc. Having that open dialogue is important. I think it also carries on into vet school as well because you have very little time in veterinary school. You’re always studying, if you’re not studying, you feel like you should be studying. If you’re not studying, you’re probably doing wet labs, you’re trying to get more experience, you’re volunteering, or you’re leading clubs. There’s so many things that you can do in veterinary school, and it can totally eat up your time if you let it. I made it my priority to have at least an hour every night that I sit down, I stopped what I’m doing, and I spent some time with my partner. Whether that be cooking dinner and watching a show on Netflix, that’s fine, but I wanted to make sure that I was having balance in my life. Again, having that open dialogue and communicating, basically saying, “hey, so you thought first year was bad? Well, okay, second year is going to be a lot worse.” Basically, giving him the benefit of the doubt, and expressing, “the next coming weeks can be really stressful for me. I’m going to have a lot of late nights. I just wanted to let you know.” I think that communication is absolutely key. He’s a fantastic support system. He understands that vet school is my dream, so he’s been wonderful supporting me with that. Sometimes he’s the one who’s pushing me to study when I’m like I can’t fit anything more in my brain. He’s, “Yes, you can. Do it for the animals.”
Jordan Benshea: animals are depending on you. You can do it.
Kamira Patel: Exactly. I think relationships are hard and it definitely hasn’t been easy. You always have to work on a relationship. I have friends who were having some long distance relationships or single coming into vet school and trying to build relationships. There’s a variety and I think it really does all come down to how much effort do you want to put into it?
Jordan Benshea: I think that’s very true with everything that you want in life. Right? Relationships take work and clear communication is vitally important in every aspect and especially in a relationship.
Kamira Patel: Absolutely.
Kamira’s Favorite Moments and Secret Talent
Jordan Benshea: What has been one of your favorite moments in veterinary school so far?
Kamira Patel: I would say I loved dissections, like I loved it. My anatomy classes were so fun for me. I think a lot of people saw it as something very cool in the beginning because you get this dog and you got to dissect it because you need to learn about this blood vessel here, and this nerve crosses this plane here, and this innervates this muscle, etc. They slowly, I think, lost that passion for anatomy, because it really got down to knowing all the details and there’s so many different blood vessels and nerves, etc. It got tiring, but I absolutely loved it. I’m tutoring lower classmen in anatomy because we do have a tutoring program at UC Davis that the upperclassmen can help with lower classmen in the classes that they’re in right now. I saw that there was a gap because no one was tutoring anatomy. I know people are struggling with anatomy just because there’s so much information, so I reached out and said I’d love to tutor and oh my god, it’s been so fun. It’s been great. It’s a good review for me too, because I learned stuff in first year and then second year comes around and I knew this at one time, but it’s totally gone. My love for anatomy made me realize that I do want to go into orthopedic surgery because I love the bones. I love the musculoskeletal system. I realized that’s what I want to do, because I love dissections so much, and I loved learning about all that stuff and the mechanics behind it.
Jordan Benshea: What a great opportunity for you to continue to improve your skills and at the same time help the younger generations coming up and learning those things that I’m sure, like you mentioned, you go through something and you think, oh, I forgot that I like this so much, or I’m sure that you’re continuing to learn as well, because you’re taking somebody through a teaching process that’s probably a great learning for you and what a rewarding experience.
Kamira Patel: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Jordan Benshea: The last question that I like to ask people on this podcast is do you have a secret talent? Something that, not like are you wonder woman secretly. Maybe you are! Pray tell, because we definitely want to know. Is there something that you enjoy doing or that some people in your life might not know or your classmates or something that’s unique?
Kamira Patel: I’d say people who are close to me know this, but people who are just walking down the street wouldn’t know. I am an artist, and I grew up doing art because my mom is an artist as well. I do a lot of animal portraits, which has been very popular in vet school. A lot of people have asked me to do portraits of their animals. That’s been really nice. It gives me a little bit of a break from the monotony of studying all day and stuff like that. I get to exercise my right side of the brain instead of my left and do something creative and artistic. I love it and it still incorporates my love and passion for animals but just in a different way
Jordan Benshea: That’s so cool. What’s your medium?
Kamira Patel: Anything honestly, but I really
Jordan Benshea: So, like watercolor, drawing, acrylic, any of it?
Kamira Patel: Any of it honestly, but I do love pencil a lot. I’m really getting into doing color pencil portraits right now. I’ve done paintings. I’ve done watercolor. I’ve done graphite. Just anything, honestly. I’ve done woodburning. I love that too. That’s something that’s super fun. So, anything honestly.
Jordan Benshea: That’s great and what a great way to like you said just some downtime. Being able to flex those creative muscles are vitally important when you’re spending so much time with the left side of the brain.
Kamira Patel: Absolutely.
Jordan Benshea: Well, wonderful.
Outro
Jordan Benshea: Thank you so much, Kamira, for taking time to talk to us and with all of your help with the VIN Foundation resources. I really appreciate you sharing your pre-veterinary experience and your veterinary school experience. I’m sure that a lot of people will find it helpful, so thank you.
Kamira Patel: I’m so glad to hear it, thank you so much for having me.
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.
