One hint I give students who come and work with me – pick one thing to get good at each day. Say for example, nail trims (overly simplistic answer, but hear me out). You then start to see opportunities to get better at nail trims all day long (the new kitten, the old decrepit dog having trouble on the stairs). The goal here is not to learn giant swaths of information in 1 day. So for my vet students, I give them suggested topics (diarrhea, vomiting, itchy ears, increased thirst, housesoiling) and tell them not to be dependent on the case load that presents itself day to day to learn things. So if you pick diarrhea as your topic, yes, you will be happy seeing the emergent case, but you will also think about the surgical patient that develops diarrhea on recovery, or the puppy who presents without diarrhea but has a suspected worm burden and will likely have it by tomorrow, or the pet who has other chronic illness who might develop secondary diarrhea as a result. Hope this helps!
