Diary of a Vet Student: When frustration boils over

 DIARY OF A VET STUDENT

CARLEIGH CATHCART

On Dec. 2, the school I’ve called home for almost four years (and spent several years working hard to gain entrance to) got ripped apart on social media after making an extremely out-of-touch post.

Capitalizing on the ‘Giving Tuesday’ trend, on Dec. 1, the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) asked the public via Instagram to “[Gift $25] to help support veterinary student well-being during these unprecedented times.”

This donation was apparently going towards purchasing students a “gratitude” and “mindfulness” journal to aid them in the stressful experience of attending vet school during a pandemic.

The problem with this post was not the concept itself (though it was absolutely an empty gesture on the part of school, in an attempt to make itself look good while actually doing very little).

What finally caused people — including not only my own colleagues and classmates, but also alumni and family members of students — to aggressively call out the college, was the total disconnect between OVC’s tailored public image and its own contributions to the burnout, stress, mental illness, and struggles of its students.

Don’t get me wrong, vet school is difficult on the best of days. No one expects OVC to hold hands, spoon feed, or give out degrees. As students, we knew when applying that we were in for long days, hard tests, and extreme volumes of content. We knew we would be intellectually and personally challenged, and many of us welcomed that challenge. We knew the career was a demanding but rewarding one, and we came prepared for the long road ahead.

Vet school is inherently difficult, but schools shouldn’t be making things more difficult by excluding students from conversations, or placing a disproportionate weight on grades for acceptance into the college and winning awards.

Let me explain.

For several years, the administration has blatantly ignored students’ pleas to be included in conversations surrounding our curriculum, scheduling, and professional development. We have been left in the dark time and time again regarding schedules and timelines. Suggestions for changes are often dismissed, appearing to be too much work compared to maintaining the status quo.

Our selection process is grossly flawed. Ontario residents have one — one — vet school in the entire country to which they are eligible to apply. There are only 100 domestic spots. To get an interview, only grades are considered. Yes, you need to include experience, reference letters, and mini-essays in your application, but these are only used to disqualify you, and are not taken into account when ranking candidates for an interview.

After interviews, the ratio becomes 65:35 for grades and interview score, meaning that grades are still the main factor of consideration. Manager of Student Affairs at the OVC Elizabeth Lowenger has justified this system at Future Vets Club admissions debriefing sessions by saying that “past academic performance predicts future performance,” which points to the rigor of the DVM curriculum.

What the OVC fails to note is that the people being denied interviews on grades alone are not ‘poor performers,’ but are people with mid-to-high 80’s averages who happen to be a fraction of a percent lower than someone else.

This emphasis on grades continues within OVC, where students are ranked within their class (though we do not have access to these rankings). Student awards are often merit-based on actions, but when two students are subjectively tied, the award is specified to go to the student with the higher average. It’s little wonder that students are not able to dissociate their worth from a numbered grade when the profession itself is dictated by filling in bubbles on a piece of paper, or that students burn out when there are one to two tests per week on an eight-month basis, in addition to five to eight hours of class five days a week.

According to a 2015 Canadi-

On Giving Tuesday the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) asked the public via social media to donate $25 to support a veterinary student's well-being during the pandemic. CREDIT: PEXELS

an Veterinary Journal study and a 2018 Time article, our profession holds one of the highest vocational suicide and mental illness rates. It’s entirely unsurprising when graduates enter the field already exhausted and cynical.

To be fair, there are also factors beyond the OVC to take into consideration. The public has a cruel tendency to berate veterinarians for charging for their services, and vets also face the intrinsic challenges of the profession, which include long hours, financial constraints, a wide array of animal species and their anatomical differences, and patients who can’t talk.

After a minimum seven years of university, we graduate tired, in debt, and often without the hands-on skills and experience we need to feel worthy of belonging to the profession. It’s tough.

Throwing a pandemic into the mix certainly doesn’t make things any easier. COVID-19 and its many barriers are not the fault of OVC, but the complete lack of consideration or compassion from the administration is. Ignored emails, missing information, thoughtless comments, and administrative incompetence have made the lives of all OVC students far more difficult than is necessary, especially in a global pandemic.

What makes this all particularly grating is OVC’s insistence on pushing itself to the public as an amazing institution with world-class education and ground-breaking wellness support for its students. Sorry, but this is categorically false. I should point out that many of our professors and clinicians are stellar and the research conducted here is phenomenal. But as a teaching school, OVC has a lot of work to do in supporting its students. And asking people to do this work for them through a donation is what finally drove students to call out the school on its hypocrisy.

I’m tired of the words ‘wellness’ and ‘resilience.’ Resilience is something that occurs when people are given the chance to recover and bounce back. This is not possible when the onslaught of challenges is never-ending, and every step forward results in two more backwards.

Resilience is not possible in a year of constant disappointment, anxiety, and uncertainty. It’s not possible when supports for depression and other serious mental illnesses have been made less accessible due to pandemic-related restrictions. And it will never be possible until OVC owns up to its role in contributing to the anxiety students continue to face in this college.