Help for every stage of your veterinary career
You all know I strongly advocate that you Aim for Zero. The basic premise is that those who aim to excel (to be a +1) often fall flat and end up being a liability (a -1). I heard one of our surgeons telling his resident a line that really stuck with me, “Better is the
My wife and I were walking around downtown Asheville, NC several years ago and there was a whole fence made into a blackboard on which you could write with some provided chalk. There was a prompt on the board, “Before I die, I want to…” People had written all kinds of interesting things. “Fall in
We just went through P&T “season” in academia and I was asked to write about a half dozen external letters and I read several dozen written for our many faculty who were going up for promotion and tenure. I learned some lessons I wanted to share to make the process easier for you, when the
What do you do if you have found this blog after you have submitted your application materials, or after you did an interview, or after you scheduled your clinical year? You read some of the advice and realize, “Uh oh, I didn’t do that.” Well, now what? Fortunately, all is not lost. First, realize that
A couple of weekends ago, I presented a CE talk. It was a one-hour talk which I’ve done before. I enjoyed giving the talk- the attendees laughed in all the right places and I felt like I dispensed some good advice and information. The talk was preceded by a four hour drive, and followed by
I was watching an interview with my favorite role-playing game GM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and something he said made me literally sit up in my chair. I thought, “This. This is why I teach students.” And if students understood it, life would be so much easier for themselves and for me. First, though, a quick
I’ve spent a lot of time writing about personal statements. There are general rules, which I’ve written about here and here. Also, there are important and simple grammar rules to pay attention to, like these and these. I’ve provided some examples of poor letters of intent, so now it’s time to look at some good
Imposter Syndrome is the feeling that you are in a certain position but don’t deserve to be. Someone made a mistake somewhere- you’re not as good as people think you are. You feel inadequate as a consequence of this belief. Even though there’s external evidence of your success (e.g. getting a job, getting good annual
The other day a work friend of mine and I were chatting about student loans and the current forbearance for student loans. They are working in academia partly to get Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which pays off all loans after 10 years of working for a qualifying charity or government organization. Unfortunately, they didn’t
I turned out to be a huge Stephen King fan as an adult. Growing up, my sister loved his horror stories, but I don’t really like horror, so I never read any King. Until, that is, I read The Dark Tower. That sold me. Now Stephen King is a go-to for me, particularly when I’m