For those of you who were not able to make it to our first general meeting of the year, here is a little recap of what you missed:
On Thursday, September 29 at approximately 7:30pm, more than one hundred pre-vet students gathered and scrambled around in a small lecture hall together to bust out a difficult mission. The main task on everyone’s mind… get the food first. Just kidding. But in all seriousness, the first general meeting started off on a good note. Highlights of the night included: free raffle tickets that were handed out, pizza and cookies that got snatched left and right, and last but not least, all the awesome students that came out to join the PSSD family! And to conclude the eventful night, special guest speaker, Dr. Jenny Boye, came out to talk about her interesting experiences and inspirations going into vet school.
On Thursday, September 29 at approximately 7:30pm, more than one hundred pre-vet students gathered and scrambled around in a small lecture hall together to bust out a difficult mission. The main task on everyone’s mind… get the food first. Just kidding. But in all seriousness, the first general meeting started off on a good note. Highlights of the night included: free raffle tickets that were handed out, pizza and cookies that got snatched left and right, and last but not least, all the awesome students that came out to join the PSSD family! And to conclude the eventful night, special guest speaker, Dr. Jenny Boye, came out to talk about her interesting experiences and inspirations going into vet school.
Guest speaker: Dr. jenny boye
Dr. Jenny Boye is a second year resident at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine specializing in comparative theriogenoloy, a branch of veterinary medicine that focuses on the reproduction and the physiology and pathology of animal reproductive systems. Dr.Boye credits many of her international experiences doing veterinary externships in helping her keep motivated to continue through the challenging path to becoming a veterinarian.
Dr. Boye was born in Denmark to two veterinarians. Growing up, she did not care to pursue veterinary medicine, at first, because she was always surrounded by animals and took care of them. However, later on, she realized that becoming a veterinarian would be a good choice for her since she knew she could be good at it with so much experience already. Therefore, she went on to study at a veterinary school in Denmark for six years.
During her years in veterinary school, Boye oftentimes found herself questioning her career path. She started to lack motivation, until she decided to go abroad to study and do externships. Her main goal was to gain inspiration and get a chance to look at the veterinary world from another perspective. So when she had time off of veterinary school, Boye ended up traveling to many different places and focused on equine health. Boye traveled all over the world during her externships from England to Singapore and even Hong Kong. After she graduated from veterinary school, she continued to work in Denmark before she received a junior vet equine position in the Middle East. Because Boye worked at a zoo in the Middle East, she was enamored with reproduction after breeding some of their animals. From there, she went on to the United Kingdom to work for a breeding practice before applying to the resident program at UC Davis.
She stressed the importance of her experiences working internationally and her ability to travel as a big reason as to how she kept herself motivated to continue through the veterinary career path. From her externships abroad, she was able to connect with animals, meet new people, and most importantly, challenge herself. And her main advice to the pre-vet students is to just keep going. She says, “it’s a hard life, but it’s worth every minute of it”.
Sidenote: We will soon be posting a Q&A about the disadvantages and advantages of going to an international vet school from the perspectives of current international vet school students.
Kelli chan
PSSD Historian 2016-2017