Finding the right balance

Finding work and life balance in any situation and in any field of work is a tough thing to do. It is important to maintain this equilibrium in your everyday life from being a vet student to a full-time doctor of veterinary medicine.

In recent studies, it has been shown that the main reason why practicing veterinarians are starting to leave the profession is due to the fact that they are not able to (or do not have) the right work-and-life balance and instead end up suffering due to the extreme demands that both the professional veterinarian life and personal life have on a person.

"It has been recorded that around sixty percent of veterinarians have said that this inability to find a decent ratio between work and life is primarily the reason why they decide to leave the workforce and concentrate on their personal life."

Loss of control over their work, lower job satisfaction started outweighing higher job satisfaction, the gradual dismissing of mental and physical health and capabilities have been piling up to the point where the push towards employee burnout is constantly increasing.

Once you find that right kind of balance, it gets easier to juggle and handle daily demands that work has on you all the whilst living your best life and being able to stay human and sane. However, in order to make the system work, it means that you have to start separating and prioritizing your goals both in work (professional development) and your personal lifestyle needs (friends, family, leisure time and personal growth).

Plan and Prioritize

First and foremost you need to organize yourself and you can do this by setting up a general plan for yourself and your goals (school-related and not). Start off with a checklist and plan that covers your daily needs outside of school and study requirements for school-related subjects. Make it as plausible as possible.

It is vital that you come up with a solid self-care plan that can work for you and that you actually manage to follow it. Or else it will not work if you make it unrealistic and put unworkable expectations for yourself.

Make time for yourself

In all the hustle-bustle of vet school and trying to schedule your life so that you can get everything you need to complete gets done, it is important to remember to save some space for “self-care”. Whether it be every day, every week, every month, it is important for you to mentally and physically step away from all that chaos, relax and recharge your mind and soul.

Overworking your brain and yourself will only result in a big burnout a lot quicker. It is up to each individual person what relaxes them, whether it's bingeing a show or going out with friends, as long as it allows the brain to not have to deal with the reality and stressors for life for a while.

Organize your errands

Plan your daily life errands that need to be run for the week at the start in advance. Knowing what you have to do a week in advance and knowing when to have them done saves a lot more time and energy as opposed to having to think and trying to figure out what to do each day.

Find time to socialize

Be sure that in addition to making time for yourself you make time for friends and family too. Make time to go out with friends and do something other than studying, because everyone needs a break at some stage. Make time to catch up with family (whether it be via FaceTime or in-person). Communication is key in many situations so being able to balance that helps a lot.

When exams get closer and studying gets more intense, a good way to get both the studying done and engage your brain with others is to form study groups. This has been found to be beneficial in many ways.

Find the best study method that works for you

Studying is part of university life. It sounds easy enough but it also is a technique that requires patience, practice, as well as trial and error to find the method that best suits you and allows you to get the most out of your course and college classes. This is a vital point and is the basis of all your successes.

Some students find it easier/better for them to study off of physical prints of books as opposed to spending hours in front of the computer screen and in some cases, the interactiveness that the computer brings is better for others.

One of the best methods that have seemed to help some people is that study harder and make your notes during the weekday and while all the information is fresh, this allows for more free time for yourself and things that need to be done outside of vet school or not.

On average, studying for around eight hours a day is a sufficient amount. A lot of what you learn can be quite irrelevant, in the sense that if it is not in your future then there isn’t too much commitment to that knowledge unless it is part of the midterm and exam material. In the long run, by the time it comes to exams and finals, you will have had your notes done and there wouldn’t be any need or cramming, just studying the already prepared notes and work. Study better not harder!

Exercise

Sometimes it is so easy to get completely submerged and focused on studying ad subjects that you forget to take care of yourself and your own mental health takes a backseat. This is why it is important to find some time in your day or week to do some form of physical exercise.

There are numerous benefits that exercise has on the brain and they have all been confirmed in the fields of health, fitness and psychology. Studies have shown that even the smallest or shortest form of exercise and workouts allows for our brainpower to get a major boost because of our bodies pumping oxygen and nutrients to the brain.

Make Notes in Class

Showing up to classes in itself helps keep you on top of the work and keep your day organized and a little easier to plan it all out. This also lets you take notes whilst in lectures during class hours, maximizing your time there and also saving you extra time for taking notes at home and using that time for other things.

Make sure to eat well 

You know what they say when they say you are what you eat. Eating well and a nutritional filled meal helps the bodywork at its optimal capacity. Healthy food energizes the body and brain with all the beneficial vitamins and minerals. Whereas, doing nothing but eating junk food and take out sooner deteriorates the body system and brain activity with their chemical combinations of toxins going into the body.

In some cases, if you are having trouble with organizing your life and food, there are ways in which you can work around this, for example, meal prepping. Some people are very advanced and experienced in this method so they know how to work it to their benefit.

For those less experienced who are willing to try this out, you can start by just meal prepping one or two dinners at a time.

For those who are just really bad at doing any form of meal planning or having to think about what to make, or are just absolutely horrible at cooking, there are companies that deliver ready-made meals to your door. This allows you to eat healthily but also save time for other more important things and even some downtime for yourself.

Work Experience

Studying veterinary to actually working in the field is a big difference. Find yourself some time to go and experience work-life in a clinic and this can determine whether you are actually up to the challenge that the work-life has to offer. This gives you a break from the studies and allows for an exploration of the life of a veterinarian in the real world. After you graduate things get a lot more stressful and you can get a small sense of this by getting internships in the clinics.

It is because of this that it is a good idea to start with learning how to balance your life with work/student life from now because when it comes to actually working as a veterinarian, you are in the position where you have to make a lot more harder decisions with the use of brainpower and logic, therefore, it is important that in these occasions you have your sanity in mind.

Get rid of unnecessary stressors

Everyone in your class will graduate as a veterinarian, GPA does not matter anymore, and everyone is in the same boat (a boat with a big hole that seems to be forever sinking, but suffering together nonetheless).

Despite all this and the fact that competition really is over, there are still a high number of vet students that arrive and are continue to be the obsessive perfectionists as they always were. They can (and do) make vet school the be-all and end-all of their lives. If it works it works but it is not a healthy viewpoint on life. Even if they make it to graduation, with the continued drive and hardcore methods, the chances of them lasting in the real world of veterinary is quite slim because it's just the start of not only the career life you have been working for but real-life troubles get bigger too.

This is why it is important to learn the work-life balance early on so you know what you’re getting yourself into, you are prepared and are ready to take on the challenges as they come.

Do not overwork yourself 

With vet school comes a whole bucketload of extracurricular activities, clubs and so many other awesome, crazy, sweet, exciting, diverse activities that you just want to join and sink your teeth into to really experience as much as you can, however, this can also become a problem because you can easily get lost in this world for hours upon hours and end up losing sight of your priorities.

However hard it is, this is why it is important to take a step back and force yourself to not sign up for some projects and experiences (even if it means you might have to skip playing with puppies and kittens) when there is an exam the next day.

You will have time for these things and these adventures will always be there, it just means a little less spontaneity and a little more organizing is required now.

Sleep 

Make sure you get a full night's rest every night, even (and especially) eat nights. This is very important. The brain needs rest, as well as our bodies, do to make it through the never-ending turmoil of vet school. With enough sleep, you will be able to function better, perform better on daily routines and even exams and in addition, be in positions where you can make better, logical decisions. Sometimes even a power nap goes a long way.

Get rid of Distractions

With the never-ending development of phones, laptops and other form of technologies, it is easy to find yourself distracted by aimlessly scrolling Instagram newsfeeds or obsessively watching TikTok videos for hours upon hours and wasting your time.

The amount of screen time not only melts the brain cells but it takes away from time that you have dedicated to other things such as studying. There are many apps that have come out to help prioritise studying by either removing the distractions or putting a temporary lock on your phone for a set amount of time that stops you from having the urge to go and scroll through social media for no reason and once the timer has been removed and you have done a good set of hours of study, you can get rewards in whatever the subject of the app is that it is used for (who does not like rewards?!).

Life is full of unexpected things that we can not plan. It is just important to realize that in order to achieve a good balance, you, yourself have to realize what your own priorities are at the time and realize that if the going gets tough you might not be able to have a good balance of life at the time and that is also okay.

About the author

Nahal is a 4th-year US student of veterinary medicine who in her free time loves strolling around the Wrocław main square, restaurant hopping and always enjoys a cup of good coffee. She is fascinated by exotic animals and after graduation plans to start her professional career in a zoo.