Patience and
Other Life Lessons

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Lauren and her family

Name
Lauren (Riley) Larson

Graduated
2004

Undergrad
University of California, Santa Barbara – bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Spanish, 2008

Graduate
University of California, Davis – Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, 2012

Lion or Unicorn?
Unicorn

Hometown
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Current Locale
Portland, Oregon


Life After Graduating Prep

After earning her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 2012, Lauren (Riley) Larson ‘04 won a Kentucky internship in equine surgery. During college, she had spent time with friends in the Pacific Northwest and enjoyed the region. So, she applied to veterinary jobs in Seattle and Portland, was offered the latter, and has lived there ever since. She and her husband Dan have a two-year-old daughter, Nina, and Dan’s entire family—parents and siblings—joined them in Portland once Nina was born. Lauren is grateful to have help from Dan’s family. “If I could give some advice, I would say, thank your parents because [parenting] is so rewarding and so fun, but is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You have to learn new lessons in humility and communication.” Interestingly, Dan is from Rescue, California, on the other side of Sacramento from Davis, where Lauren earned her veterinary doctor degree. But she and Dan actually met as undergrads in Santa Barbara, 400 miles south of Sacramento.

Pet Services with a Personal Touch

Lauren works for a small private practice in Portland but with a twist: they’re a mobile veterinary unit, using a van to make house calls to treat people’s pets. It was a choice they made once the pandemic made working in a brick-and-mortar building untenable. The back of the van even acts as a surgery unit when needed. Providing their mobile services during the pandemic has been “really rewarding because it maintained that human bond and contact that would’ve otherwise been lost.” Lauren and her business partner have even paid visits to nursing homes with pet owners who couldn’t leave their bed. And if they can’t enter a client’s location, the pet owner can deliver their pet to the van, and the veterinarians give progress updates to the client by phone. Lauren has “treated all kinds of animals” throughout her career, focusing on dogs and cats. “But we’ll see goats and chickens, [too]. Not so much the reptiles, but anything with hair.”

 

Reminiscing About Prep

Lauren played four years of soccer while at Prep with a team that made it to state her last two upper school years. They won the state championship her junior year. “It was one of those bonding moments where you’re a student at Prep, but you’re also a soccer player. So you had that extra ‘title’ that bonded you to your teammates, and it was really fun. I remember going up to the school assemblies, and we would have a theme and make t-shirts and get pumped for the game. It was fun to have that school spirit.” When she attended Alumni Weekend a few years back, Lauren was fired up to participate in an alumni soccer game against the then-current Girls Varsity Soccer team. Lauren laughs at the results, “They kicked our ass! I should have known we were no match, but it was so fun, and it was really good to see some of my classmates and get back on the field.” Besides sports, Lauren fondly recalls Ernest Polansky’s science class. “He was hard on us and very nurturing at the same time. You kind of had to earn it, and I feel like that’s been a good life lesson.” She also speaks enthusiastically about her time with the Outdoor Leadership Program (OLP) as a Camping Associate. She fondly recalls her trips to the Colorado Great Sand Dunes, El Malpais, and the Gila Wilderness. The experiences were indelible, whether crawling through narrow, tube-like caves or going on a solo night hike after being told scary campfire stories about the chupacabra by an idiosyncratic English teacher. “We just had a blast. It was so cool. It’s really unique for Prep, and I’m so glad they’re still doing outdoor things. It builds confidence and independence.”

 

How the School Also Held Space

“I hear people all the time who are like, ‘High school was one of my least favorite time periods in my life.’ And I think the complete opposite. I think Prep was, so far, one of my favorite periods in life. You’re just so lucky if you got to be a Prep student. I wish I could go back and relive it again.” Lauren and her brother Christopher Riley ’07 “only overlapped by three years because he started as a sixth-grader, and I was a freshman. We were kind of in our separate little groups, but it was so fun having him there.” And importantly, she remembers how, as a sophomore, she, Christopher, and other students were supported when 9/11 happened. As they drove to school on that fateful morning, Lauren and Christopher understandably had a hard time believing the news on the radio. But in class that day, the teachers had TVs or radios on and were helping the students process the traumatic experience as it unfolded. “I imagine if I were not at Prep, I would’ve probably been pretty terrified. So, it was nice to have that community. I just felt [fortunate] to be able to share that experience, all in the same boat, staring in disbelief,” and talking about the circumstances.

 

A Lasting Impression

When thinking of Prep, the word that comes up for Lauren is “patience.” She remembers in class that all of her teachers would stoke conversation and debate but not necessarily provide answers. “They’d just leave space for like, whatever came next. It’s like, ‘Are you right? Are you wrong?’ You could answer your own questions and figure things out.” That kind of classroom philosophy taught Lauren to stop and think about personal considerations and then move forward. The gifts of self-confidence and discernment are something she says she learned directly from her time at Prep. Lauren shares that while it’s hard to answer succinctly how she would define Prep’s ethos, she stated simply that Prep “opens up your possibilities and rather than educating on ‘stuff’ and curriculum, it really focuses on problem-solving skills and it works on you as a student, not so much on the material. That’s why I would tell someone to go to Prep.”


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