Vetnuus | Januarie 2024 28 « BACK TO CONTENTS The following encouraging words were spoken by Dr Kirsten Erika Steyn at the event of OP Graduation ball on the 8th of December 2023. Welcome these new colleagues into the folds of Veterinary Practice and please encourage and assist them in all ways possible “Welcome friends, family and especially my colleagues. To those of you who don’t know me I have been your class representative for the past 4 years. Yes, it was me spamming you with endless reminders to be on time, fill in forms and bring calculators to tests even though we didn’t always use them. Here we are. For some of us - shoutout to my golden oldies- it took a decade to reach this point. It seems incredible that only a moment ago we wrote our first hit-and-run for anatomy. It felt like we had no idea what we were doing and that we would never make it, but here we are. Describing the person who decides to study veterinary science or vet nursing for that matter is tough. We are such a diverse group. However, I feel there are 3 traits we all have in common. Every single person here is patient. We are patient with owners who don’t always want to tell us the truth. We are patient with our patients who have no way to communicate to us how they feel. Each person here also needed to have patience with our fellow students asking what the dose of metacam was. Next is compassion. There is no way to be in this profession without buckets of compassion. Every day compassion is shown to owners saying goodbye to their companions. Owners who tried everything, who didn’t try anything and owners who couldn’t afford to try. Our patients also need our compassion more than anyone or anything else. Finally, and I consider this the most important is resilience. To graduate from Onderstepoort a person needs to be endlessly resilient. As most students will tell you, OP puts you through the most. For the past six years, we have been pushed to our limits. In 2nd year we had no idea if we were meant to study this degree. In 3rd year we went online, 4th year our workload increased exponentially and in 5th year we did a year’s worth of work in 6months including a very arduous, if not fun, feedlot challenge. Then of course we had 18 months of clinics where lunch, weekends and sick days didn’t exist. And despite all this group of students rallied. They rallied for patients, they rallied for their friends and most of all they rallied for themselves. Sitting down to study 6 years’ worth of work after not writing any tests for 18 months took every ounce of strength and unparalleled courage was needed to walk into those exam halls to write the most important exams of our lives. SO TO THAT END, I WOULD LIKE EVERYONE TO PLEASE RAISE A GLASS TO THE BVN AND BVSC CLASSES OF 2023!” v Onderstepoort Class of 2023 Graduation Ball
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