Things I’d tell my younger self

I can remember it like it was yesterday. During both my years of veterinary school and throughout my internship, a copy of Vet Times was always lying on the table of whatever house I was sharing with other vet students or interns.

It would essentially live on the kitchen table and be read, flipped through, shared out loud over breakfast or dinner (or both), and eventually discarded and replaced by a newcomer every week. I can also remember how much I loved gleaning through the pages and reading through clinical and non-clinical articles alike, curious to learn something new, read about the state of the profession or hear a colleague’s thoughts.

Time has passed, and along the years I have contributed to Veterinary Times on a handful of occasions. Throughout these contributions, I have always written about orthopaedics. But as I find myself at a turning point of my young career, I have been reflecting on a lot of non-bone-related things; things I would tell my younger self.

A saying I love is “All that is not shared is lost”. I can’t travel in time and talk to my younger self, but I can certainly share in writing a few of the things I have understood, in the hope it may be of value to a house full of vet students, where a beat-up copy of Vet Times may weekly land on to the kitchen table. So here they are, in no specific order.