She graduates near the top of her veterinary class and still couldn't get hired... because she’s a woman! That’s where our conversation with memoirist Linda Rhodes begins and it only gets more vivid, entertaining, and frustrating from there.
Linda and I talk about her book Breaking the Barnyard Barrier: A Woman Veterinarian Paves the Way and the reality of becoming a large animal veterinarian in rural Utah when sexism isn’t subtle, it’s stated out loud in job interviews. Linda takes us through the early spark that pulled her into farm work, to the gatekeeping she faced getting into vet school, to the pressure of being “the test case” for whether women can do the job. Along the way, we sit with the unglamorous truth of dairy cow medicine: freezing nights, no hospital nearby, no backup, and decisions that carry real consequences for animals and farmers.
We also go deep on the memoir writing process. Linda shares why her mother’s death pushed her to write, how she learned to stop writing like a scientist and start writing like a storyteller, and how she chose what grief to put on the page and what to keep private. From there, the story widens into career reinvention, women in leadership, animal health pharmaceuticals, entrepreneurship, and what it looks like to build a family-friendly workplace that actually works.
If you care about women in STEM, gender bias at work, memoir, veterinary medicine, or the kind of resilience that’s earned day after day, this conversation will stay with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the moment that hit you hardest.
Purchase Linda Rhode's "Breaking the Barnyard Barrier"
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Xx, Alex
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