Third-year veterinary student Jeremiah Pouncy joins this week's episode to talk more about his life in veterinary school, how he got there, and where he hopes to go after.
With summer now starting to come to a close, veterinary students across the globe are preparing to head back to veterinary school, some even for the first time. On this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomes Jeremiah Pouncy, an incoming third year veterinary student at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and president of Cornell's Student National Association of Black Veterinarians and its Student American Veterinary Medical Association, to talk about his personal journey into veterinary medicine, what he is looking forward to as he heads into his third year, and how an internship with the NFL fostered a love of business.
Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Okay, so you're entering your third year of veterinary school. What are you most excited about coming up into your third year? And what are you most excited about when you're going to be a veterinarian?
Jeremiah Pouncy: Oh, I most 100% most definitely [am] excited for third-year surgeries. I [think] that's going to be very, very interesting, very fun. The way they do it at Cornell is we have 3 of us on a team. So like, there's the doctor role, there's an anesthesiologist role, and there's the assistant role, and each person has a turn in each of those different roles. So I'm interested in seeing how those go, how the team dynamics go, and everything. I feel like it's going to be like a phenomenal experience. Some people may spay [surgery] cats. So I feel like that'll also be cool too. So super excited about that, as well as getting more in depth about the clinical side. We're going into block 5b for the entirety of the fall semester, and that is essentially all the clinical correlates. So super excited to learn a lot, do those junior surgeries, as well as see what other opportunities just come up.
I feel like throughout my entire time in vet school so far, I've had so many opportunities I could not have planned it out at all. Some things just pop up. But I tend to just say yes and figure out what I need to do after, whether it's the traveling, it's more like say yes, then I'll figure out the money somehow, some way, and just trust myself that I'll figure it out. So, excited to see what kind of surprises me throughout third year as well.
And then I would say, being a veterinarian, I would say, kind of seeing how my journey goes is probably my biggest thing, just because I'm interested in all these different things. And I know I when I first get out, I'll be practicing a lot, but I know that it'll, like, slowly taper out with everything else that I get involved in, once... I actually understand what it means to be a veterinarian for a few years. So I'm interested in seeing how my future kind of unfolds, and how many people and animals I'm able to impact through my work, whether it's practicing as a veterinarian or being able to build different businesses, whether it's the bottled water company, whether that blows up somehow, some way, and I'm able to continue having community impact, whether it is being able to fund somebody doing some crazy conservation work in Kenya or something. I [think] there's so many opportunities, so much potential. So I'm just excited to see where life kind of takes me. Yeah, I don't know if I could say like one thing. I'm just excited for the possibility at the end of the day.
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