Milan Piva remembers being asked throughout elementary school, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Without hesitation she always answered, “A veterinarian.”
That desire never wavered as she entered adolescence. So, when she graduated from Parsons High School in 2009, she headed to Baker University for her undergrad, majoring in biology with an art minor, with her goal being to go to vet school.
“I didn’t do much shadowing in high school or during college, but I did do one job shadow during winter break, and I saw the clinic and thought, ‘I don’t know if this is for me. I don’t know if I like, necessarily, how the clinic is run.’ It was not a good fit. It made me second guess, ‘Is the career overall going to be good for me if I’m not really enjoying this?’ It threw me off,” she said.
The result was, she veered off from that path and went to grad school at Emporia State University, majoring in biological sciences with an emphasis in plant biology and horticulture. She thought about potentially teaching those courses at the college level. However, upon graduation, she worked as a horticulturist for three years, and found herself unsatisfied with that career path.
“I still had a passion for helping animals and volunteered at an animal shelter,” she said. “I was sitting around in the greenhouse one day and realized that is what I should still be pursuing. So as a second career student, I went back to vet school from 2019 to 2023 at Mizzou. I graduated a year and a half ago from vet school. During my schooling, I also got a master’s in public health at the same time I was getting my doctorate.”
While in veterinary school she took an ophthalmology course and found herself very intrigued. She was able to do several internships or externships at different clinics and see the quality of life for a veterinary ophthalmologist and see the day-to-day.
“It really made me fall in love with the specialty,” she said.
After she graduated, she moved to Ithaca, New York and took a rotating internship at Cornell University.
“It is further training for my ultimate goal which is to be a veterinary ophthalmologist. Just like the human side of medicine, you have the cardiologists, radiologists, orthopedic surgeons. We have all that on the veterinary side as well, so we spend eight full years, depending on what specialty you go into, training for that specialty,” she said. “In this internship, I rotate through all the specialties -neurology, surgery, internal medicine, and all those other services - to really solidify that I’m making the right decision.”
Once done at Cornell, she said, “I’ve still got another fourish years before I get where I want to be in the veterinary field, to get to be an ophthalmologist. I still have another year of internship to add at the University of Massachusetts, and then three years of residency to follow, and I don’t know where that will be. So, I still have a lot of education to go. This is only if you want to specialize. If you only want to practice veterinary medicine and see daily patients and do general practice, you can graduate and immediately start. But if you want to specialize in anything, you have to continue on like if you are in human medicine.”
Piva said her biggest take away from her experiences is: “Don’t let a single experience deter you from something you’ve really thought about. Go to multiple places and have different experiences and then make your decision. If I had just gone straight through to veterinary school, I would have already graduated, and I would have gotten through my residency by this point.”
That is hindsight though. On the flip side, she doesn’t know if she would have even been ready for vet school, and the maturity required. Or, if she had gone straight to vet school, she may have been left wondering if something was a better career path for her, like horticulture.
“Ultimately I ended up where I should be,” she said. “I kind of turned away from it while I was in undergrad and still ended up back on this track. Ten years after I started undergrad, I went back to school to become a veterinarian. It’s really rewarding. That’s the biggest thing. It truly is rewarding. It is definitely the career I should be in.”
To high school students considering being a veterinarian, Piva said there is a huge demand for veterinarians across the board. Just about any town you move to there is a need in that area. There are multiple options one can pursue after earning their Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, too.
“You don’t even necessarily need to see patients,” she said. “You can do a lot of different careers, just with that degree. It’s really worth furthering your education and following your passion.”
Once she completes her residency, she plans to move back to the Midwest, to be within driving distance of her parents and sisters, who live in Parsons and Arkansas.
“They are talking about putting a vet school in there at the University of Arkansas, so if I wanted to stay on the more academic side, and continue to teach while I practiced, there would be the potential to do that as well,” she said.
To students still in high school, or just beginning college, she offered a few added pieces of advice.
If you are not sure what you want to do as far as a career, or you maybe don’t want to go to college, get as many experiences as possible. Visit public libraries and other public spaces where you can expose yourself to a wide range of opportunities and career options that maybe you haven’t been exposed to before.
“Reach out to Parsons alumni and read things like these spotlights to find out about them. A lot of times people are willing to host you and let you shadow and experience that field. You can learn a lot just going and watching for a few days,” she said.
If in school looking at the college catalog of courses, and you see something that intrigues you when you read that description but isn’t necessarily something that is required for your major, take it. There could be a reason it speaks to you.
Lastly, she said, “Don’t be afraid to pursue something you are interested in, no matter your age. I didn’t go back to vet school until I was 29, so don’t let age hold you back. Definitely, pursue your whole life, something you’re interested in.”
