You're not comparing your life to other people's lives. You're comparing your life to their marketing materials. That is not a fair fight, and you have been losing it on purpose.
Veterinary medicine has never been a certainty business. It is a probability game. A good decision improves the odds of a good outcome, but it does not guarantee one. When we confuse outcome with quality, we risk punishing good medicine, rewarding lucky medicine, and teaching clinicians to carry weight that was never fully theirs to own.
The best learning often happens when the problem is real, the stakes are immediate, and you need the answer five minutes ago.
Knowing when to persist and when to walk away requires more than grit. It requires clarity about the goal, the payoff, and the path.