More than a mentor

Erica Burkland
Cornell University, '14

I met my mentor, Layla, in 2008 while I was working as a weekend receptionist at a large 24-hour referral hospital. I had been working there for just over a year while pursuing a master’s degree in social work when Layla was hired as an emergency vet. Although I don’t quite remember exactly when or how we started to become friends, I do remember that our first conversation went something like this:

L: So, what’s your deal?Erica and her mentor, Layla
Me: Excuse me?
L: What are you doing here? You’re too good at your job to be true.

When I then told Layla that, actually, I had recently decided to forgo completing my MSW in favor of pursuing vet school, she frankly said, “That’s what I was hoping.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Even from the early stages of our friendship, Layla went out of her way to help prepare me for a career as a veterinarian. Though I was “just a receptionist” while we worked together, she always made a point of teaching me whenever and whatever she could – paging me to radiology to view interesting radiographs, giving me my first suture lesson, even conducting lessons on acid/base disturbances and the different types of rodenticides on the rare days when the emergency service was quiet enough to allow us fifteen minutes to scarf down lunch together. Outside of work, Layla offered advice for choosing elective courses that would strengthen my application to vet school and help me thrive once there, read what felt like a thousand drafts of my vet school personal statement, and wrote me a strong letter of recommendation. Layla and I celebrated each of my vet school acceptances together, and when it came time for me to make the impossible decision of where to attend, she was patient and supportive – even when my decision meant that I would have to turn down the school in the city in which we lived and move four hours north.

As a vet student, having a mentor like Layla has been absolutely essential for the retention of my sanity. I can (and frequently do) call her at the end of a particularly frustrating day to vent about any aspect of vet school and she can easily identify with whatever it may be, having lived through it herself not long ago. Layla consistently offers valuable advice as I struggle to decide which field of veterinary medicine I’d like to pursue, sharing her own past and present experiences so that I may benefit and learn from them. Above all else she is my constant reminder that there is in fact life after vet school, and that all of this hard work will pay off eventually.

While Layla has been and continues to be an outstanding mentor, she has also become one of the best friends I’ll likely ever have. Together we have road tripped along the east coast, hiked through Acadia National Park, and traveled to Europe. Before I moved away to attend vet school, we regularly spent nights cooking dinner, baking cookies, and watching hours of mindless television together. Layla taught me how to drive golf balls and took me to my first NHL hockey game. During my first year of vet school, I happily missed two days of class and the weekend before a final exam in order to be a part of her wedding. Cliché as it may be, Layla is one of the few friends whom I know I can always count on and trust; whom I can call at all hours of the day or night; and whom I know will always be there when I need her. During vet school and beyond, I am so fortunate to have the best of both worlds in Layla – an outstanding professional mentor and an even better friend – and I hope that I can someday be for someone else what she has been and continues to be for me.