Vet School Marathon
Imagine you are an endurance runner. You trained relentlessly for a good portion of your life. And you like running. You wake up and you can’t wait to live, breathe, eat, and sleep running.
Now, imagine you have the biggest race of your life coming up, that will determine if you get to be a professional runner. You CAN’T WAIT! When you arrive, you feel like you are in your element. THIS is what you were MADE for. THIS is what you want to do for the rest of your life!
However, right before you begin, you are given the outline for the race. You are asked to run not one, but two, marathons in a row. Not a big deal, it can be done! But then you are told you have to maintain a certain speed. Sprinting. You laugh. Sprinting two marathons? NOT possible. But that’s what they ask you to do, so that’s what you do. Because you love running, after all.
And you may maintain speed for quite some time, but eventually, you are going to fall. You are going to fall hard, and you might lie there on the cold, hard ground, cursing the day that you ever said you wanted to run. You might cry, wondering if you can ever be a runner if you hate this part. You might lie there, not knowing if you can make it one. more. step. And that’s okay.
Vet school is lot like sprinting a marathon folks. It requires endurance that everyone will fail to meet at some point along the way. AND THAT’S OKAY. You are allowed to fall. You are allowed to be burnt-out. You are allowed to be depressed and angry. You are allowed to hate it. You are allowed to struggle. You are allowed to take breaks. You are allowed to find hobbies and destressors and other interests that gets you away from the race.
But the good news about running this marathon is that there are other runners to pick you up when you fall. And it doesn’t matter how many times you fall, or how many times you struggle and have to be picked up, we will all cross this finish line together.
