Final year veterinary student, Yuliia Zaruda, tells us about life as a vet student in Kyiv. With a lack of modern teaching resources and infrastructure to support the profession, vet students are working as qualified vets before they graduate and are taking self-directed learning to a whole other level. After completing an internship here in the UK, Yuliia hopes to one day bring her surgical skills back to the Ukraine to build a future for equine vets in her home country, and to enable the horses there to have access to the veterinary care that we so often take for granted here in the UK.