UF CVM Careers January Newsletter

Happy New Year! Welcome to a new semester at UF CVM. We hope that everyone had a pleasant holiday season.

We encourage you to keep up-to-date by following our Facebook page and watching for emails about dinners, workshops, and more!  

Student Tip - How to Make Difficult Decisions

Veterinarians (and vet students) have to make difficult decisions on a daily basis about patient care and treatment options; however, decision making does not stop once you get home from work. Whether you're making decisions as a veterinary professional or facing a serious crossroads in your personal life, the choices you make today can define your future. As such, the ability to make good decisions is an important factor in your growth and success.

Trivial decisions like what shirt to wear or what brand of pet treats you want to buy may be easy enough to make (though some people spend hours agonizing over these decisions). It's gray area problems that are hardest to resolve - ones where despite all the research you've done and experts you've talked to, the best choice is still unclear. In these situations, it's up to you, your experiences, and that pesky gut feeling to decide what is the best course of action. How do you put yourself in the best position when faced with hard choices? Here are 5 pieces of advice for how to approach potentially life-altering decisions:

1. Think in Years, Not Days – Meaningful decision-making needs to be done with care for long-term effects. The most successful people are generally future oriented, rather than thinking about only the next few hours.

Unfortunately, most of us are conditioned to respond as quickly as possible. From the moment our alarms ring in the morning, we're in "reaction mode", acting based on the stimulus around us. In prehistoric times, reacting quickly to new stimuli in our environment was important (since you didn’t want to sit back and think about whether or not that lion really wants to eat you), but in the modern era, we need to calm those thoughts.

Before jumping to a conclusion, consider the consequences of your decision. Take a deep breath and separate yourself from your instinctive "reaction mode."

2. Understand the Effects of Decision Fatigue – A study from Columbia University found that Americans make, on average, about 70 decisions each day. After a certain point, we reach decision fatigue - a condition where the mental energy required to weigh the trade-offs of our decision become too much for us to handle.

A study of Israeli judges' decisions to grant parole to prisoners found that the judges were dramatically more likely to free prisoners earlier in the day (before they had made many big decisions) or after lunch (when they've rested for a while) compared to late in the afternoon. Because they had already made many big decisions earlier in the day, it was harder for them to decide if granting parole was appropriate.

This demonstrates that it’s important to be self-aware of what state of mind you’re in before tackling a hard choice. Those 16-hour days going back and forth on a tough decision might be doing more harm than good.

3. Cut Down on the Number of Decisions You Have to Make Each Day – Building on the concept of decision fatigue, we've learned that letting small choices accumulating can set us up for failure.

One of the easiest ways to face a difficult decision with our full attention is to simply make fewer small decisions. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama all limit their wardrobe to a few key pieces to cut down on the "what should I wear today" dilemma. You don't have to throw out 90% of your wardrobe to cut down on simple decisions though. You could select from a handful of lunch options that you rotate throughout the week, always buy the same brand of pet treats, or ask wait staff for dinner recommendations so you don't have to stare at an overwhelming menu.

The key is to cut down on the amount of mental energy you expend on trivial decisions so you can save up for the more important choices in your day.

4. Consider the Opposite – In a meta-analysis of 50 years’ worth of judgement and decision making research published by Harvard Business School, one piece of advice for making a difficult decision that came up time and time again was to get an outsider's opinion. The researchers found that talking to those detached from the decision has 3 main benefits:

1. Reducing your overconfidence about what you know

2. Reducing the time it takes to make a decision

3. Increasing your chance of entrepreneurial success

This doesn't mean that you need to ask 20 different people their opinions (remember decision fatigue), but it does help to get an outside opinion.

5. Stay Away from the "What If" Game - Once you’re close to what you feel is the right decision, it’s easy to get sucked into continuing down the same path over and over again. Psychologist actually have a name for this phenomenon, Counterfactual Thinking, and it describes how we dwell on decisions we didn't actually make.

At a certain point, you need to trust you’ve put in the thought and work to make the right decision and just commit. It’s impossible to know whether the choice you’re making is 100% right. Instead of feeling powerless, remember that your gut can be just as powerful a reason to make a choice as all the research, data, and opinions you’ve already gathered. You've got this!

The tips in this section were provided by Zapier.com. Please visit the original blog post for more complete references.

Looking Ahead to Events

Learn more by clicking the links and don't forget to RSVP for food events!

Mentorship Workshop - Thursday, February 28th, 2018, 5:30 p.m., New Auditorium; Come join us for our Spring mentorship workshop! Following a brief presentation about mentoring, interact with veterinary professionals through scenario based discussions. Moe's will be provided.

Highlighted Gator CareerLink Job Postings

We have over 130 jobs currently listed on our job widget, below are the three most recent.  Click on the button below to view all of them.

Associate Veterinarian Full-Time

Healing Heart, Inc. (Multiple Locations)

Posting Date: Dec 31, 2018

Veterinarian - Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice Full-Time, Part-Time

Lap of Love (Nationwide United States)

Posting Date: Dec 31, 2018

Emergency Veterinarian Opportunities Full-Time, Part-Time, Internship

Lakeshore Veterinary Specialists (Multiple Locations)

Posting Date: Dec 21, 2018

For the full list of all current job postings, please click the link below

UF CVM Careers Facebook Page

Interested in staying up to date with career opportunities and other career related information that is accessible to you? Consider following us on our Facebook Page!  Check out the three most recent visitor posts below:

For requests to receive this newsletter or include information or events in this newsletter please contact Katelyn Jerles at jerles@ufl.edu