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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.
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