Can someone help me think?

[TheDuckCrew]

My grandma came over the other day, and said i should be a vet. I was pretty set on being a lawyer because i like to agrue and i'd make enough money to do anything animal related that i wanted to. i told her i could never put an animal to sleep, and she said i could. that the vet my aunt used came out and had them bring their dog to her favorite spot to put her down. i've been thinking about being a vet, and i think thats what i want to do. but i'm still not sure if i could handle the death and the blood. i brought it up with my parents, and they say they won't send me to college for anything animal related. my friend said her mom could get me sort of an internship with a vet to see if i could do it and if i would like it. what should i do? i'm really confused...

 

[ibpboo]

I think it would be great to try the internship thing! I think you should do what you want. Sounds like you really rather be a lawyer. And then have enough money to do anything animal related as you want!!

 

[Hens_And_Chicks]

I think when you are young, you think you want one thing and later find you wish you had done something else. It's confusing to have so many choices to make and try to focus so clearly at such a youthful age.

I say - try out the internship - it's a great and inexpensive way to find out if you would like something. Don't do what someone else wants you to do - do what you want to do. You have to live your life and be happy with the choices you make. Sometimes other people mean well but they try to re-live their life through their offspring or kids they mentor. Your grandma does not have to live with your choices - she means well but what she likes is not what you should pursue.

Just my two cents.

 

[Chicken Boo]

I suggest you work at a vet office for a summer. Also, talk to several attorneys while you are at it. My DH comes from a family of attorneys. None of them makes enough money to do whatever they want with animals. The are doing well but are not rich. The attorneys I know of that are that rich do not have much spare time. They work late and on weekends.

The trick here is to find what you love and do your best to go do it.

Good Luck!

 

[TheDuckCrew]

my grandma only said what she did because we have a rescue cat that just LOVES me. he is terrified of everyone else, but he will walk up and snuggle with me. she could hear him purring really loudly, so she said i should be a vet. also, my friend that brought up the intership said i should be a vet because of how i'm treating my duck with bumblefoot. animals are what i care about the most out of anything in the world. i couldn't live without them.

haha. my rescue cat just came up and sat on my keyboard. sweetie.

 

[Southernbelle]

I worked for a vet for 3 years - my last 2 years of high school and my first year of college. It was a difficult and rewarding job - you saw owners who truly loved and cared for their animals and then you met idiots who should not own an ant farm, let alone dogs or children. I could tell you a lot of heartwarming and heartbreaking stories.

Let me just say it is a very, very messy job - a lot of them get scared and pee or poo in the waiting area or on you. Then the males who smell other dogs and cock their leg on the reception desk. Or the poor dog who died having seizures while vomiting and pooping diarrhea splattering everywhere.

I wanted to be a vet. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Science (Dairy and Animal Science with a Science option) from Penn State. I chose not to continue to vet school because I wanted to stay home with my children whenever I had kids and I didn't want to spend all that money on school and not pursue the career. I'm a stay-at-home-mom now with 3 kids. I use what I learned in college here on our little homestead and I'm very happy.

There are resources to help you pursue your career no matter what. You can major in almost anything as an undergrad and still apply to vet school or law school. (The vet we use now majored in English as an undergrad.) Just check out the grad schools and find out what basic cirriculum they require for admittance and take the Biology and Chem courses you need your electives.

 

[ibpboo]

Sometimes people tell me I should be a vet too, for the very same reasons you gave. Animals like me, I try to save them..........

Talking to attorneys, and vet internship are great ways to find out more about career choices. Sometimes you think you want to do something, and then when you are doing it, change your mind. Me? Well, I still haven't thought of anything yet. So, I'm a lunch lady!

 

[HippieHomesteader]

Quote:
These are the exact points I was going to make! I worked as a vet tech for 5 years, and people have a misconception that it is a very snuggly job. In fact, there is little time to be snuggly with the animals.

Being a vet can be rewarding, but I always felt it was more of a 'calling' than a career. In addition to being rewarding, it can be financially tough, emotionally traumatizing, and taxing on your personal life.

I agree with the suggestions to intern with a vet for a while, but also make sure you talk frankly with the vets you are working with, interviewing them about their college experience, vet school years, and those when they first started practicing.

Also, remember that, unlike many post-bachelors programs, you don't have to have a degree relating to the vet field. One of the best vets I ever knew got her undergrad in English or some such.

In any case, good luck to you, and remember, you don't have to make all your decisions now! There's plenty of time to change your mind; some of the most interesting people I know didn't find their calling until they were well into their 30s!

 

[TheDuckCrew]

Quote:
These are the exact points I was going to make! I worked as a vet tech for 5 years, and people have a misconception that it is a very snuggly job. In fact, there is little time to be snuggly with the animals.

Being a vet can be rewarding, but I always felt it was more of a 'calling' than a career. In addition to being rewarding, it can be financially tough, emotionally traumatizing, and taxing on your personal life.

I agree with the suggestions to intern with a vet for a while, but also make sure you talk frankly with the vets you are working with, interviewing them about their college experience, vet school years, and those when they first started practicing.

Also, remember that, unlike many post-bachelors programs, you don't have to have a degree relating to the vet field. One of the best vets I ever knew got her undergrad in English or some such.

In any case, good luck to you, and remember, you don't have to make all your decisions now! There's plenty of time to change your mind; some of the most interesting people I know didn't find their calling until they were well into their 30s!

thanks. i know its not a snuggly job, and thats the reason i both want to do it, and i don't. i want to help the animals, but i also don't know if i could handle when they can't be helped anymore.

 

[Rosalind]

If you haven't entered college yet, the best thing I can tell you to do is to go to a small liberal arts college if you can possibly afford to do so. Lots of the small liberal arts schools offer enough financial aid that they end up being cheaper than state school in the long run, so don't just compare tuition prices--the smaller schools tend to have more financial aid per student than state schools. And they have more flexibility about to whom they're allowed to give financial aid, whereas state schools just follow a strict set of rules.

No matter where you go to school, I can just about guarantee that you are going to have to take what the school will call "general education requirements" or "liberal education requirements." If your parents went to a trade school, they may have a hard time understanding the concept, but basically you have to take classes that have nothing to do with your major, on the general principle that it's good for you to have a well-rounded education. And it's true. You will find, especially if you get into science general education courses your freshman year, that you will be very interested in all sorts of things you didn't previously find interesting, and that some things you thought were interesting at first are in fact quite boring.

The thing about vet school is that you do have to take a certain amount of biology and chemistry, and those courses tend to run in a very specific sequence: it takes 3-4 years in order to complete the sequence. The other thing about vet school is that it's very VERY competitive, much more so than medical school. You need straight As in everything, plus summers spent volunteering on farms to work with large animals, volunteering at the SPCA, etc.

The benefit of a small liberal arts school is that they will be able to shepherd you into those types of volunteer and research opportunities, and you'll have lots of small classes where your professors know you personally--they will be able to write very good recommendation letters for you. In state school, no one cares, and it's up to you to find out all that stuff. Your recommendation letters will be more like, "DuckCrew was in my class and got an A. She seems like a nice person and loves animals." Compared to three pages of, "DuckCrew is the most dedicated and brilliant student I've had in twenty years of teaching, and her work on the molecular differences between BalbC and Black6 mouse immunology in my lab has been critical to the field of blah blah blah," the smaller school is clearly the better choice for getting into grad school.

Also, after taking general education courses, you may well find that you don't want to be either a vet or a lawyer. You don't have to decide for some time. I will say that I know many ex-lawyers who were quite unhappy AND broke all the time, who ended up becoming teachers of some sort: one high school teacher for at-risk students, a community college Civics teacher, a special education teacher. I think the wealthy lawyers were pretty much already wealthy from their parents, and that "startup" money enabled them to start their own practice when they graduated. I know a few reasonably happy corporate lawyers, but they aren't wealthy per se, more like "not starving and sorta comfortable in the suburbs." And ironically, some of them have undergrad degrees in animal health, agriculture, etc. but then went to law school afterwards to become intellectual property lawyers for science-based industry.

Bear in mind that the only reason to decide would be if scholarship money rides on it. AFAIK, the only programs that require dedication and immediate decision-making are the six-year MD programs, if you wanted to be a doctor. Everything else, you can choose to do whenever you like and when it's convenient for you financially.

One last bit of advice: Although your parents may be paying for school, they are going to have to reconcile themselves with the fact that they may not get what they want out of you regardless. My mother wanted an artsy writer/photographer/teacher for a daughter, and she got a biotech scientist instead. Even though my job is curing cancer (among other horrible diseases), and I make decent money, she is still unhappy about that state of affairs because it isn't what she wanted. It's your life to live, not your parents'.