Sterling Hart - New Zealand
This summer I was extremely fortunate to spend 3 weeks at the Animal Referral Center (ARC) in Auckland, New Zealand. During this time I was shadowing Dr. Joon Seo, BVSc, DACVIM, his intern Yi, and the cardiology tech, Penny. I had always wanted to visit New Zealand, and felt this would be a great opportunity to truly experience the different culture that I had heard about.
My favorite part about visiting Auckland was getting to know the people there. I spent most of my day with Yi and interns from other departments. Everyone was extremely kind and made me feel at home, and I made great friends that I will never forget. Dr. Seo was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met- he took Yi and I for coffee many times, drove me to see a Gannet colony at Muriwai beach with some coworkers, and happily gave me so many learning opportunities.
Something that was very interesting being at ARC was the different work environment. New Zealand is known for the structure of workplaces being less focused on hierarchy, with one manifestation of this being that everyone calls each other by their first names. I had trouble calling Dr. Seo his first name for several days (I obviously still struggle to call him Joon even when writing this), but I was the odd one out for being formal so I had to adjust.
Apart from getting to know the amazing people, there were many hours in the clinic that I spent learning many, many new things. We saw up to 5 new cardio cases per day, which I got to help work up every step of the way. Joon gave us regular quizzes and participated in rounds and lectures with us. I had a lot of time to do my own research on topics that we saw that day as well, making me feel much more confident in my cardio knowledge base. I did a rotation at the Davis cardiology department in the same summer, and the many skills and pieces of information that I gained in Auckland proved invaluable to my understanding of cases.
Traveling by myself to an entirely new country was initially very scary for me. On the plane ride there, I had a TON of nerves about how I would navigate the new city solo. The nerves lasted for a few days, but after my first week of walking to the clinic alone and then learning how to use the bus systems to go sight-seeing on the weekend, I started to feel more confident. Looking back, I now see that being by myself for those weeks was a blessing. Coming away from it, I truly feel like I can handle anything on my own and trust myself to figure things out. It was also a valuable opportunity to experience how taking a solo trip can be really freeing and fun when I may have never done so otherwise. I learned that when you travel by yourself, the world is literally your oyster, with only you to decide what you want to do next!
