Miami, Empty Fridges & Back-to-School Chaos: Real Talk on Vet School After Dark

Vet Candy – Veterinary Lifestyle, News & Learning

In this episode of 'Vet School After Dark,' veterinary students JC, Jeremiah, Jess, and Kennedi reflect on their summer experiences, includi

Key takeaways

• Food insecurity is a widespread but under-discussed issue in veterinary school, affecting many students despite financial aid and loans.

Main topics

• Veterinary student life after summer
• Food insecurity in vet school

Notable quotes

"There's no shame in getting that help. It's something that people just don't use enough." – Jess Mitchell

Conclusion

The episode ends with a reminder that vet school is not just about academics—it's also

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) You're listening to Vet Candy. Speaker 4 (0:17) Hi everyone, my name is JC and welcome to Vet School After Dark. This is the Vet Candy Podcast where us vet students are talking about what vet school is actually like. The exams, the exhaustion, the clinical chaos. We're going to talk about the stuff that nobody wanted you to know and the things you definitely wouldn't say to your professor. We're going to talk about school, we're going to talk about money, relationships, mental health, career dreams. and everything that happens in your first year anatomy lab until graduations. No lectures, no pretending we have it all figured out because at the end of the day, we just don't. This is vet school after dark, but let's get into it. But first... Future Vets, quick interruption, because Betken is doing something that's actually kind of insane. They built an entire 12-week intensive Natalie Vets program. And guess what? It's completely free. You get study guides, thousands of practice questions, self-assessments, board-certified specialist videos. And you also have quiz show topics. And it features my man, who's also on this podcast, Jeremiah Pouncey. and also a whole lot more. It's basically like an entire Navi study system, except it's for vet students and it's also free. So go to myvetcandy.com slash prep and sign up for MyVetCandy's free Navi prep. Your future Navi self is going to be very happy you did. Hey guys, so thank you again so much for just tuning in. having free time to just procrastinate with us a little bit. My name is Tracy Alvarado. I'm originally from Puerto Rico and I am in Colorado State University. And if I could just have our co-host just say their name. And we also have Kennedy Robinson. Right now she's coming back from Miami. So we're just going to give her a little minute so that way she can get settled before she joins us. But who else is here? Speaker 3 (2:15) What's up, y'all? My name is Jeremiah Pouncey. I'm from Northern Virginia, but currently go to school at Cornell up in upstate, upstate, upstate Ithaca, New York. But yeah, happy to be here. Excited to get this podcast on the road. And Jess, if you want to introduce yourself. Speaker 1 (2:31) Yeah. Hi, my name is Jess Mitchell. I am going into my second year, two days away from being a second year at The Ohio State University, but I am originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Speaker 4 (2:42) So that's the crew. And yeah, like I said, Kennedy is going to talk to us for a minute. But yeah, I'm really excited that we just get to talk and we get to talk about real things. So, yeah, let's get started. I don't know who wants to go first. I know my topic. I'm pretty excited. But Jeremiah, do you want to go first? Speaker 3 (3:01) Oh, you can have me Speaker 4 (3:02) go first. All right. All right. So Speaker 3 (3:04) back last week, I feel like it was last week. I went to WBC Nashville. which WVC brings out like tens of thousands of veterinary professionals. And usually it's in Vegas every single year. So I was in Vegas back in February. 10 out of 10 vibes. Amazing conference. You have the education aspect during the day. You stay up late. It's Vegas. And then you wake up early in the morning and you stay up late. That's essentially a cycle. But this was the first time that they did it in Nashville. So it was a lot easier for like vet students that are in the Tennessee vet schools to be able to go. So there was a few more vet students there. The vibes in Nashville were really cool. There was an insane turnout. I feel like even the people that were putting on the conference, like WBC. I feel like they also had their expectations blown out the water. But yeah, whether you're like that professional vet student, y'all definitely 100 % should go. I don't know if you guys have been to any of the conferences yet. Speaker 4 (4:03) I've been to AVMA. I think VMX a long time ago. They're really fun. I really, I think for me, that's the networking piece of just say, getting to know people, just finding out who people are and like things that are like new and happening. Yeah. And also like, I don't know if like, obviously like one thing that's also important to like share with everyone. It's like a lot of students can get in the conferences for free. You just have to get in really early. Yeah. But it is available. It's there, you know, it makes it easier for us to go. Yeah. Speaker 3 (4:37) And you can get travel grants. Like no matter what conference you want to go to, whether it's like you're reaching out to like Sabma, VDMA probably has some stuff too. You probably look at the website. They may have like grants and opportunities. But whatever you do, definitely got to at least try and get some. Share hotel rooms with people. Like just hotel room, Airbnb, whatever you got to do to make a shake. Because also, it's an excuse to travel. It's usually an excuse absence from the school. Because you're going to be learning stuff. You'll be able to do some CE. But you're also able to vacation. Like WVC is in now Nashville, Vegas. And who doesn't want to go to Nashville or Vegas? VMX is in Florida. AVMA a couple years ago was in D.C. This past year was in Anaheim. And you got discounted tickets to Disneyland. Oh, my Speaker 4 (5:24) God. Yes, I was so jealous. Everybody was going to Disneyland and I've never been. I was so sad. I think I was taking an exam that day. Hashtag sad. But next year we'll be able to do it. Honestly, as long as the food is good, wherever it is, I'll go anywhere. I Speaker 1 (5:40) actually. Just went to a conference over winter break. So I actually, it was probably more like eight months ago now, but it was like yesterday. And I wanted Grant actually to go. It was the AVMA Leadership Conference. And she'll be a little bit. Every year, the AVMA fully funds a student seat in the hotel and the travel and everything. So I've never been to Chicago. So it was just a really great time. And I met so many awesome people. Speaker 3 (6:07) But Speaker 2 (6:07) my Speaker 1 (6:08) favorite conference to go to is by far the Shelter Medicine Conference that they have every year up at Cornell. So Speaker 3 (6:14) I'm Speaker 1 (6:15) pretty jealous you're so close to that, Jeremiah. Speaker 3 (6:18) No, I love the Shelter Medicine. I haven't been to that conference. Yeah, before. And you want to get into shelter med, like that's your... Speaker 1 (6:26) Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's what I'm looking to go into. Speaker 4 (6:30) Yeah, we love that. We love that. We need more shelter vets. We do. We need more shelter vets. We need more. I feel like people don't really know how much shelters do. Yeah, there's a lot of access to care. There's a lot of community medicine. Right. And there's a lot of like they have a lot of food pantries. And I think this segue to one of the topics that I wanted to talk about was about food insecurity and food insecurity in veterinary medicine and like our colleges. I do think that's something that is happening and we don't talk about it enough. Something that I looked up and it said, I mean, Economic Research Service basically said like 13.7 percent. of households experience food insecurity. And like putting in the numbers, that's like 18.3 million households. And so talking about food insecurity, I also wanted to talk about the programs that exist. And because sometimes whenever they're giving food, I know, you know, I'm one of the first ones that just spoke on and like tries to get food. Because as a vet student, even though you have all those loans, you need that to pay your bills. You need that to like get supplies that you need. With CSU, we... of like food pantries and they call it like pocket pantries around campus. So you can just go and whatever time you feel most comfortable and just go get food that you need. We also have a program here at CSU called Snap for Rams. And it's basically this case management where they help you get Snap. You get money every month to just get food and feed yourself. I don't know what other like experiences or things that you know, Jess, like in your school maybe. Speaker 1 (8:09) Yeah, we have a very similar program with the pantries all in the break rooms that we have for the different classes. There are food pantries and all my friends, I use them. We all use them. We bring stuff to them. Faculty staffs it. There's like a budget for it that staffs it. So it's a really awesome program that everybody knows about. I'd say the biggest thing people are afraid to talk about their personal food insecurity and. A lot of the conversations I've had with my friends, they're very concerned that, well, I don't really need these resources, so I shouldn't use them, especially like we're talking about applying for SNAP. What people don't understand are these systems are in place to help you and you've been paying into them your entire life. Ever since your first vet clinic paycheck, you've been paying into it and you're going to pay into it for the rest of your life. So if you need it, it is there. And there is no shame in getting that help. It's something that people just don't use enough. Speaker 3 (9:11) Yeah, I agree. I 100 % agree with all that. Same thing like Cornell. There's food pantries like locally around. And then for our SABMA chapter, one of our delegates, he actually created a food pantry. So we have something within the CVM, which was pretty beneficial. Shout out again. But it's like, I feel like it is a... a conversation that needs to be had more. And I don't know if it's like between students and faculty and like us letting faculty know and leadership know that we need more GOPA, that we like more GOPA, like how that actually gets, I guess, executed upon. But it definitely is something that has to, I feel like has to change. Is this another way that we would Speaker 4 (9:52) be able to be more student? 100%. And the same thing that you said, Jeremiah, happened also in my school. Basically my class. I'm really proud of them. We built like a pantry for ourselves during our first year. And we actually, just like you said, it's talking. The admin letting them know, hey, we need help. How can you support us? And they, you know, they did help us. And we still have the pantry. We're in fourth year. And we've talked about it enough that they didn't put it in like the Veteran Teaching Hospital. So it's not only for us. It's also for the employees in the hospital because at the end of the day, the techs that help us, the, you know, like admin stuff, they're all real people going through, you know, we're all going through the same struggles. So I think it's just. nice that we can bring a lot of awareness and going back on the snap I think I don't think a lot of people realize that it's about 188 dollars per person every month and you can definitely stretch that budget with like budget-friendly meals or just you mentioned something about like your friends bring food and my friends and I we did like last summer we basically did like family dinners And what we did is we each brought, yeah, it's good. I know. So we kind of just like each brought an ingredient. So we're like, okay, we're going to do taco night or like we're going to do burgers today. And so each one of us just brought an ingredient. We all cooked together. We made sure we had leftovers. And it was just a nice way of having community, having food, having a good time. And overall just feeling like safe and fed. Because you also. with how demanding vet school is, you know, how much pressure we put onto ourselves. You cannot like expect someone to perform at such a high level when they're just wondering like, when is your next meal going to come from? You know? Yeah. Speaker 3 (11:42) JC, you talked about a little bit before, like conversations off the podcast about meal prepping. And I know you meal prep. Yes, I meal prep. Yeah. After I'm getting into it, I feel like, I don't know. I feel like I'm not. I don't know if I'm not good at it. I don't know if I didn't do enough. I don't know if I don't got the right containers, Tupperware, whatever. But it just hasn't worked for me. So I need some tips with that. Speaker 4 (12:08) I got you. Okay. And Jess, chime in, of course, afterwards. Kennedy, I know you're listening. So chime in afterwards, too. I would say my tip is find the meal that's the one that you need the most during the day. So for me, that's breakfast. Like, I need to have breakfast. breakfast in order to function and coffee so sundays i try to focus on like either breakfast burritos or like breakfast bowls and these recipes don't have to look like they're really nice ones on instagram and on tiktok that you see and they're like look at my meals that i made today and they're so fancy i'm like i'm not chad right what i know i know and they make it like it doesn't have to be that hard it can just be something as like eggs and sausage or if you're gluten-free or vegan they have some like really easy recipes online that you can follow even on pinterest too so honestly anywhere and for me i think you just need to get started and just keep trying i can send you some of my recipes too yeah i got you my Speaker 1 (13:13) um meal prepping looks A lot different. I'm vegan and I've been vegan for years. So I am kind of forced to meal prep and plan out my days because if I forget to pack a lunch, I can't really go through a drive through and get all my food groups. Like I'm very guilty of eating a French fry and a Diet Coke for more meals that I'd like to admit. It's a problem. Speaker 1 (13:40) But it's funny that you said that you plan around breakfast because I probably plan around lunch. I don't eat breakfast. I think it just throws me off. And I have like a big lunch. I don't know. And you Speaker 4 (13:54) live fine. Yes, Speaker 1 (13:55) fine. Speaker 4 (13:56) And you're here. Speaker 1 (13:57) I'm just so much of a not morning person that anything I have to do or plan in the morning just upsets me, including breakfast. Speaker 4 (14:08) That is so fair. Are you a morning person, Jeremiah? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. You wake up at like 3 Speaker 3 (14:14) .30? No. Wake up between 4 or 5, go to sleep around 8, 9 is the perfect idea situation. Clinics has thrown that off a little bit here and there depending on the rotation. But in an ideal setting, and like when I was on lectures and everything, yeah, like 4 to 5 to 8, 9. It's like, wait, you don't got to worry about anybody getting your phone. If you're able to get stuff done, you can study before. I know, Speaker 4 (14:42) I can't. I would say I'm not really a morning person, but I'm also not a night... I'm a coffee person, I would say. As long as I have coffee nearby, I will live forever. And that's the hope. Speaker 1 (14:55) I am so much more productive at night. Ideal bedtime is around 2 o'clock. Speaker 3 (15:02) See, I feel like my... My brain would not function at that point. That's the best. But Speaker 1 (15:09) I Speaker 3 (15:10) used Speaker 1 (15:10) to be a bartender for a long time. 2 a.m. I knew. But that kind of put me on a weird sleep schedule and I never went back. Speaker 4 (15:19) Okay, ER. No, no. I'll never get into the ER. Speaker 3 (15:23) No. Speaker 4 (15:24) ICU. Speaker 3 (15:25) No, I feel like I love the overnight ER shifts. Like on my ECC rotation, that was my favorite shift. Speaker 4 (15:32) For sure. Wait, what time was your ER shift? So I Speaker 3 (15:36) guess you either had 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. to midnight or midnight to 8 a.m. Speaker 4