This article was originally printed in the Nov/Dec 2025 issue of the California Veterinarian magazine.

When I was a child growing up in Southern California, one of my favorite books was James Herriot’s Treasury for Children. A veterinarian, Dr. Herriot wrote both adult and children’s stories about his cases and patients in the English countryside, and his tales of veterinary medicine inspired me to become a veterinarian myself.

Twenty-four years later, I achieved that dream and graduated with a BVM&S from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (Herriot’s homeland). After making the difficult decision to move back to the United States, I returned to California, where I started working in small animal general practice. Since then, I have been challenged in many ways, largely for the better.

New graduates stand on the cutting edge of the industry, having just been released into the world with the newest and most up-to-date knowledge available. This, I have found, is a double-edged sword: while I have been excited to bring innovation with me, it is also daunting to approach my colleagues with much more real-world experience and established practices and suggest they do things differently.

Luckily, my practice team has been incredibly supportive and open to my ideas. On the other hand, the “gold standard” care that I was rigorously taught in veterinary school has necessarily become tempered by pragmatism, real-world situations, and the valuable advice of my mentors. I am finding that a healthy combination of practical experience and innovation are the key to good medicine.

A couple of values that I adopted from my time in the UK were the importance of mental well-being and work/life balance, which are notoriously difficult to maintain in America. Accordingly, even before my first day of work, I was determined to set strong boundaries to avoid the quicksand of hustle culture. Unfortunately, I learned quickly that the stricter my boundaries, the more anxious I became when I had to compromise even a little.

I realized that, for me, the intersection of “work” and “life” needed to be less like a wall and more like a curtain. After this realization, I adopted a degree of flexibility with my time, which in turn empowered me to enforce boundaries when I really needed to. Most importantly, I’ve learned that my well-being does not exist in a bubble; I do my best to foster positive well-being in my teammates as well.

As I reflect on the anniversary of my first year in practice, a milestone that passed in October, my biggest battle and takeaway from this year has been becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. People tried to verbally prepare me for the transition from school to the field, but I think it was impossible for me to fully understand until I experienced it myself. It felt like being thrust from the warm, safe confines of being a student with no genuine responsibility into a harsh, chaotic world where everyone looks to me for answers.

“The ‘gold standard’ care that I was rigorously taught in veterinary school has necessarily become tempered by pragmatism, real-world situations, and the valuable advice of my mentors. I am finding that a healthy combination of practical experience and innovation are the key to good medicine.”

This is a heavy burden, but it is also an amazing privilege. Over the last ten months, I have been constantly stepping outside of, and thereby expanding, my comfort zone for my patients, clients, team, and myself. While the act of improvement often feels overwhelming and exhausting, it can also be exciting and rewarding.

I recently picked up James Herriot’s memoir All Creatures Great and Small from the library, in which he details his first two years of practice. I was surprised and comforted to find many of my own experiences over the past year reflected in his words. For all the ways in which this field is constantly improving and evolving, things have not changed so much in 90 years. If James made it through, so can I. I look forward to continuing to grow and learn in this field in my second year—and for many years to come.