Vet School After Dark: Vet Students Are Saying the Quiet Parts Out Loud

Vet school teaches you how to diagnose disease, interpret lab work, survive anatomy and eventually become a veterinarian.

But who teaches you how to survive vet school? That is where Vet School After Dark, the newest podcast from Vet Candy, comes in.

Hosted by five veterinary students from across the country, the new show is built around the conversations students are already having after class, in group chats, over coffee, and during those late-night study sessions when the conversation inevitably shifts from exams to everything else going on in their lives.

The hosts are JC from Colorado State University, Jeremiah from Cornell University, Kennedi from Purdue University, Jess from The Ohio State University, and Emese from Rowan University. Vet Candy readers may already recognize them from our recent student features. Now, they are coming together and taking over the microphones. And this isn't another podcast telling veterinary students how to study harder.

It is about everything that happens around vet school.

The Stuff Nobody Puts on the Syllabus

Veterinary students are preparing for one of the most rewarding careers imaginable, but getting there comes with some very real challenges.

There are student loans and the anxiety of looking at a number that somehow keeps getting bigger.

There is food insecurity and trying to eat something other than whatever happens to be available between lectures and labs.

There are relationships. Dating. Long-distance partners. Friendships that change when you disappear into veterinary school for four years.

There is figuring out how to stay healthy when your schedule seems specifically designed to prevent sleep, exercise and meal prep from ever occurring on the same day.

There is confidence, comparison, money, mental health, loneliness, career uncertainty and the occasional realization that everyone else seems to know exactly what they are doing.

Spoiler: they probably don't.

Vet School After Dark is going there.

Five Schools. Five Perspectives. Zero Pretending.

What makes the show different is that these conversations aren't being delivered to veterinary students. They are coming directly from veterinary students themselves.

JC, Jeremiah, Kennedi, Jess and Emese are experiencing veterinary education in different programs, different parts of the country and different stages of their own lives. That means there won't always be one answer, and that is exactly the point.

One student may have figured out a great way to manage money. Another may be struggling with it.

Someone may love long-distance dating. Someone else may think that sounds completely insane.

They can talk about what is working, what isn't, what they wish someone had told them earlier and what veterinary students are actually worried about right now.

No pretending to have everything figured out. No motivational speech required.

From the Minds and Hearts of Vet Students

At its core, Vet School After Dark is about making veterinary school feel a little less lonely.

There will be serious conversations about student debt, food insecurity, mental health and the pressures facing the next generation of veterinarians. But there will also be conversations about dating, friendships, wellness, embarrassing moments, career dreams, bad decisions, small victories and the ridiculous things that happen when you put a bunch of exhausted veterinary students together.

Because becoming a veterinarian is about more than learning medicine.

It is also about figuring out who you are while you're doing it.

And sometimes the best conversations happen after dark.

Vet School After Dark is coming to Vet Candy. Listen, subscribe and join JC, Jeremiah, Kennedi, Jess and Emese for real conversations about vet school, life and everything nobody thought to put in the syllabus.