A New Grad Vet School Journey (Part 1) | Interview with Dr. Stephenie Severson

In Part 1 of this two-part interview on Behind the Stethoscope, Dr. Elizabeth Brann sits down with her former roommate and close friend, Dr. Stephenie Severson, as she prepares to graduate from Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine and begin her career in mixed-animal practice in North Dakota.

Stephanie shares her journey from growing up in a small town in North Dakota to attending the University of Minnesota Crookston to getting into vet school at Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine, and so much more

In this episode, we discuss:

• Stephenie’s path to veterinary school
• Not getting accepted on her first attempt
• How a gap year changed everything
• Why grades are not everything
• The importance of extracurriculars, volunteering, and unique experiences
• The challenges of first-year veterinary school
• How mentors, roommates, and friendships make all the difference

This conversation is full of honest advice and encouragement for pre-veterinary students, current vet students, and anyone pursuing a goal that doesn’t happen on the first try.

🎧 Listen to Behind the Stethoscope for candid conversations about veterinary medicine, life as a new graduate veterinarian, and the realities behind the profession.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi friends and welcome back to Behind the Stethscope. My name is Dr. Elizabeth Brand. I am just a new ER Gred veterinarian, just trying to figure everything out like the rest of us. I want to thank you guys for showing up for this episode. We have such a good episode coming up. It is an interview with officially Dr. Stephanie Severson. It is a part one of a part two interview that I had with her. I ended up going to Manhattan, Kansas this past weekend, and I it was an honor of a lifetime to get to hood her as she walked across the stage. Stephanie is such a good friend of mine. She was my old roommate when in vet school for my third and fourth year in her first and second year. We connected right off the bat and again became instant sisters. And I am so extremely proud of her. And I'm so excited for you guys to hear this interview. Spoken by a literal new grad about how she feels about vet school, pre-vet, just kind of going through her journey, our relationship, and how she feels about a brand new job. So I am so excited to get into this. You guys are gonna love it. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed doing it. So let's get into it. Okay, so thank you for coming on. If you want to introduce yourself and tell people about you.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Hi, my name is Stephanie. I'm Elizabeth's best and prettiest and smartest and humblest roommate. Enough said, yeah, that's all I got. I am from a small town North Dakota. I went to undergrad at the University of Crixton in Minnesota. So I'm representing the Northern Forgotten Tundra. I have a background mostly in large animal, but through my journey have come to love my small animal too. And I can proudly say that I am about to, as in really soon, be a Kansas State University vet school graduate, and I will be doing mixed animal back in North Dakota against my better judgment. I double-majored, so I started equine science because at first I thought I just wanted to be an equine vet. I've always had horses growing up, like I've always loved riding. I never really did barrel racing or anything like that, like nothing crazy. Just I've always been more fascinated with them themselves and like their medicine and how they work type of thing. And I did a bunch of other sports in high school, so I really wasn't into the rodeo. But when I started doing that, you had to take like animal science, and we had a variety of large animals at Crixton, and so I quickly realized that I liked more than just horses, and so I double majored in animal science as well. So I actually have two bachelor's degrees.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Did you know you wanted to be a vet since you were like little and growing up, or was this something that you just fell into?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

I loved this question because fun fact, I did, but I thought I didn't think I could do it for both I have never thought I was smart enough, which is aging well, and I just thought that it would be too sad. So actually, what I wanted to do was I wanted to be a medical examiner, which if you think about it, if you think that being a veterinarian is too sad, I wanted to work on dead people. Nice so nice. I wanted to do like forensics, very closely related careers, so pretty much the same thing. And I wanted to do that until about my junior year in high school, and then I job shadowed at a funeral home, and I realized what the path would be like to go to be a medical examiner, you'd still have to go to med school. And so I was like, if it's gonna be a similar path, why not just do the veterinarian? And so I started like shadowing very late, I never turned back, I loved it, and now that's my fun fact all the time is I actually wanted to work with dead people, which is so crazy, but it gets a gets a good giggle out of everyone, and now I'm not doing that.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

So you started late. I feel like a lot of people can relate to that as like starting late and going, How can I catch up to what everyone's wanted to do? I've always wanted to be a vet growing up. So I started when I was 13, shadowing and all that stuff. Did you feel behind? Like, how did you feel catching up in that?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yeah, so I actually like I don't none of my family, none of my friends, like I didn't know anyone in vet med. So I was the very first one. So I started shadowing my junior year of high school, but I didn't work at a vet clinic. I so I did three years of undergrad. I didn't start working at a vet clinic until between my second and third year. That was my first job uh at a vet clinic, was it must have been 20 before I was 21. Yeah, so I just didn't know the path was very unclear to me. I looked at programs like undergrad that had a pre-vet program because uh at the time I didn't know that pre-vet is basically just your sciences. You can get an associate's or whatever, even a bachelor's in biology, and still have the rec the rex. But I didn't know that. I knew nothing. So I picked out a and it worked out because I picked out a school with a pre-vet program and it was all laid out for me. I didn't there was no guessing. But like even like an undergrad, I worked at a daycare with with little kids, and I if you know me, and I got a bunch of experience there. We had like horses, sheep, goats, cows, and all our classes revolved around that. And then I I only started working at Vet Clinton when I did because I needed an internship to graduate. Oh wow, and it was right at COVID. And so I'm lucky they even took me because I feel like if I would have been somewhere else, like here, Texas, forever, yeah, northeast, yeah, I might have gotten opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

I don't really know where I would be, but that's kind of when I started wanting to do small animal. I wouldn't have known that I liked small animal if I hadn't started with a pandemic when I yeah. I I started really late with my like so.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Did you know, did you have a feeling that you were gonna get in to vet school? Did you get in first try?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

How did that look like applying, stuff like that, being so late? Okay, so I didn't even know the application process. When it was time to apply, it was like a year before graduation. They told me it was time to apply, and I was like, maybe what? I'm sorry. Who?

unknown 6:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

So that was a whole nother uh realm of things. And I like of course gotten involved in clubs and stuff because which I'll get into a little bit more, but like it's not all about experience in the vet school application. So I feel like I was quite well-rounded in other areas as far as not the experience, but I filled it out to the best of my ability and like I did study abroad club, so I had a bunch of a couple study abroad trips and like president and whatnot, and like pre-vet club, of course. But I had some other things, like I played volleyball and stuff like that. But I did not get in my first time. I applied to six schools because North Dakota has like a program where you can get in-state tuition in certain states, so I only applied to those states and I was waitlisted at Oregon, so which is really far, especially compared to here, but I didn't end up getting in. And I graduated in three years, so the hope was to cut a year off and do seven years of school instead of eight, which I did still do, but I did end up taking a gap year between, which I felt was good both for experience, both for me and my journey. People say it's hard to get back into it if you take a year off, but personally I got experience. I saved up some money and that type of thing. And so I felt like the second time I applied and interviewed and everything, I was way more confident. I knew what to expect. I wasn't so nervous. Like I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't change it. I think I grew a lot in that year. I think everything happens for a reason. And it just makes you who you are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

I mean, I think a lot of people who don't get in the first time, they're like, My life's over, my world's falling apart. And so hearing the different side of that saying, maybe it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

You're better for it. Right. So I also want to say that surprisingly, my weakest subject has always been science. And it's not because I don't like it, like biology type of thing. It's like I can't do chemistry to save my life. You could put me right now into an intro chemistry class or a high school chemistry class, and I wouldn't know shit. I literally don't do chemistry. I don't I love English and I love history, which is so not here. So even I excelled in all the animal classes and the experience and everything, but the problem was like I did not do good in chemistry. I got C's, I had four C's. Well, I tried, and that's the biggest advice I give to people who are applying and stuff is I did not have shirt things.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah, same.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

If I'm like a solid B student, yeah, plus chemistry.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

They were down here.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

And so that was another factor, is that obviously here I'm graduating.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, so the fact that my transcripts and my what GPA were a little lower did not stop me from coming here.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

But I didn't retake any either. Because when I didn't get in that gap, you're I'm like, do I retake a class? Do I try to retake a chemistry? I have never cried more than chemistry class. Yeah, I that was my biochem. I could count on one hand how many times I've cried because of that school. Yeah, I could not count on both my hands how many times I cried because of chemistry. So anyway, not getting in my first time, like obviously I was working at a clinic and everybody knew I was applying. And so not getting in my first time in approaching that, I felt so stupid. I felt so embarrassed. But like hindsight's 2020, but looking back, like it didn't last very long. Like I didn't feel embarrassed or whatever, like whatever. A lot of people don't even get as far as I did. And I was very much not, there was no other option for me. Like by the time I was in it like that, I was in it.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Like there, there's no other path I'd want to be on.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

I didn't have that fallback.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Yeah, it was like this is This is what I'm doing, and this is yeah, and I and it was funny because my parents always told me, Hey, what if you don't get into pet school? Hey, let's realistically think about how hard it is to get into pet school. What if you don't? My advisors would tell everyone that's yeah, and I wasn't an A student. I we probably had very similar GPAs, and they were like, You need great grades, you need straight A's. That's always what you hear. Yeah, and I think it's true, like you still need good grades, but like you said, there's so much other aspect in the application process that even good old me who had like the lower, yeah, the lower GPA of it all, and not a science person.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

I I love to say that because every it's such a science-based thing, but it's different, it's so different. And I just wanna, yeah, I just want to say like chemistry is like a cut class, like it's like people, it weeds people out. Yeah, if you can get through it, you're you're gonna make it.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think like honestly, that's how we feel about vet school. Once you get into vet school, we're I think we'll jump here. Is once you get in, like you're gonna be you're gonna make it, you're gonna get there. It's like the getting in is like the hard process of it all. And I've been talking to a lot of like pre-vet students and having conversations with them of like what advice I have for them to get into vet school. And I was like, be you.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Like C's get degrees. No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

I'm just kidding. No, really, it's I was like, B you. That is like my best advice. Like, I don't know if you have any advice, but like truly for me, it's be you, that's all you could be. And if they want to, they'll take you.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah. And like I said, like I just feel like everyone focuses so much on grades, like people focus hyper focus on that and think that's the most competitive thing. Like, I would say if you are not as I don't want to say like academically strong, struggle in a grade or a class or whatever, join your clubs, do intramurals, like literally, I don't know how the vet school application has changed, but you list everything from like elementary school grades. That's a little dramatic. But like do sports, do whatever you're good at, 4-H, FFA, and continue to do your hobbies because it's not just about the grades, it's about like well-rounded, like volunteer in your community. Do I a hundred percent I recommend a study abroad trip? Not only do you get to travel, but I did one with a host family, which is nothing to do with vetmed, and that it makes me different. Do things you can still do things without it relating to vetmed and put that on there because it shows that your life is not just that, it's just diversity.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Yeah, 100%. And like people focus on any grades and they don't join those like clubs and they don't join do the volunteering and FFA and all of that stuff because they're like, I need great grades, and I think that's what people miss out on. And I think admin is looking for well-rounded people that oh, look, she did study abroad, she is interested in other cultures, she is interested in different people, like something that will make you stand out.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

I uh one of my friends she has her own like inflatable business, like she bought a few like bouncy houses and stuff, and she goes and sets them up at any event anywhere, and that is such a memorable thing because who does that? Yeah, that's nobody does that, and so of course she stuck out because of that. Or I started just a one-year online master's in forensic entomology, veterinary forensics. So it's like I like forensics, that's what I did in my gap year. I forgot about that, but you would not believe the interviews that I did for vet school, how fascinated people were about veterinary forensics and stuff, and so it it just it just stood out. They really were like, that is so cool because who does that? Like it doesn't even have to be directly related to vet med, just something like that makes you different, like any experience, really.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

No, I 100% agree.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

So of course you love animals, of course you want to work with animals, you've loved them their whole life, it's not what they want to hear, yeah, because of course you do, yeah, or you wouldn't be here to begin with it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

No, and I think the takes of oh, I want to do veterinary medicine because I love animals and because we like we literally all do, but I think having the take of actually I want to work with vetmed because I want to advocate for animals, or I like I really love the idea of the aspect of advocating for something that can't talk or something that's different, yeah, or even like research, like research that's a whole nother can of worms that I I personally didn't get into, but they they love research too, and that is a different path that I could have gone down that I just personally wasn't interested in. But that is another thing to make you stand out is different areas of research or research projects you've been a part of with or without animals.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Yeah, no, I agree. Okay, so now we got into K-State, go cats. You uh started first year, we roomed together, just history changed my life, yeah. History on us is like we room together for your first and second year, my third and fourth year. I'm two years older.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

She romanticized it for me.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

We found each other on Facebook and video called, yeah, and I said hey, etc. etc. So anyway, so first year, let's talk about vet school. Let's what you like, what you didn't like, what did you think coming in would be the hardest? What actually didn't end up being the hardest, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

I kind of got my teeth kicked in. I'm not gonna lie, I don't know. People had said the hardest part is getting in. Yeah, wrong. Okay, I'm it's hard, it's hard to get in, but even going from undergrad, I was so busy. I did the two majors in three years, extracurricular activities, whatnot, but it was spread out. I remember I could go to the gym in the middle of the day, I had an hour break between classes, and vet school, you go sitting in a classroom for eight hours a day. You have to focus for eight hours a day, minimum, minimum, and plus you have labs, plus you have plus the labs and plus everything else. Honestly, if and if I could give any advice, and maybe people feel differently because they didn't have this experience, but I would say room with older people, and maybe that's just because I never roomed with people my age, but I can a hundred percent say my life would not be the same now if I did not room.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

I don't know, maybe I just got lucky with it. Yeah, older people because it feels so serious, especially first year.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Like school feels yeah, like it's your entire life. Like you have to have your head buried in the book, especially first year. And it can get lonely. I moved 13 hours away. I didn't know anybody here, and there were a couple of upperclassmen that I had been in college with, not my same grade or anything, but I just I remember the first couple months were hard. I missed my family. Uh, at the time I didn't even I didn't even have a significant other, and so that was without one that it got lonely. But you make good friends, find your group of people, and get out of the house and don't just study all the time. Okay, a wise woman once told me day one, I don't believe in school on Fridays. I'm not gonna name any names, but I wouldn't say that's 100%. True, yeah. Oh my god, it's okay to skip a class. It took me until third year, I think.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

And not even the vice of skipping a class, but do you? Yeah. I think at the end of the day, it's so important to have that perspective. And I like want to circle back to that really quick. And like you're saying that, like when there would be us, and I remember there's multiple times that you're like, My world's falling apart. I miss my home, like I I'm struggling in these classes, like I don't know what to do. I can't go out with you guys or go to this, can't go to dinner because I have to study, and we're like, it's not that serious. And I think that brings perspective of trust me, and I always say this. I'm like, if I can do vet school, like you can do vet school.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

She did, and now I tell people that, and it's crazy. And everyone's like, Oh, you're so smart. You're my role model, you are my role model, and shit.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

You're still like and I'm like, that's crazy. No, that's literally crazy, and I think, but like we had that too, right? My everybody's been yeah, and I was like, I had perspective too. I was first year, like all of this stuff, and we had a neighbor that was two years older, Jake, and he brought so much perspective for us, saying it's okay, young one.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Like, and that's exactly what I feel like yeah, and that's find someone older than you, and some programs do the big and little thing where they'll try and pair you up, really take advantage of that because once you get through first year, it's a lot different. You just need you need to get your study group, you need to get in your groove, find your way. But then first year, I remember towards the end of it, I had finally got my groove. I was so excited to be done. And second year, even with the summer gap, it just fell into place. Like second year was such a breeze. Not that it wasn't hard, but it's so much easier when you have your people.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Okay, I want to thank you guys for listening to this episode. Again, I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did, and I will see you next week for part two of that interview. Again, I think Stephanie gives such a great perspective of kind of her journey and advice for pre-vet students and everything like that. So, again, I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did, and we will see you guys next week. Okay, I just have to put a disclaimer in here. This content shared behind the stethoscope is for educational and informational purposes only. This podcast does not provide medical advice, establish a veterinary client patient relationship. Any cases that I discuss throughout this episode are generalized and anonymous. Pet owners should always consult their veterinarian for medical decisions regarding their pet. And opinions expressed are my own and does not represent my employer or organization. Thank you guys so much.