Choosing a Career

[Perry17]

My plans, I have been raised in a farming small town. With grandparents and great grandparent that all farmed. And that stopped with my parents generation and siblings.

I was really big into agriculture as a kid. Started producing my own goat herd at 8 when my grandparents gave me my first set of bottle babies, and it grew from there. Around that time the chickens and rabbits became mine, and first got started incubating anything and everything and selling it at auction or feed stores. At 10 I got a rescue horse to nurse back to health, so that started the horses.

In middle and highschool I was big in FFA and 4H. Was able to try out all kinds of livestock, that I am greatful for now. I have already made all the mistakes there are to make, so I am prepared for when I start my own farm up.

In early highschool I got my first ABCA Border Collie, and trained her to work like a dream. I had my first ABCA litter from her this year, and also bought another pup to train. I really love working dogs. And have had an offer to go do an paid internship type thing with a sheepdog trainer from out of state. Which I would love, but it is scary leaving everything I know. But that's an option too. They do boarding, dog training, herding training, grooming. I would love to start something like that one day. But like y'all mentioned, what job do I have to do to get to that point.

Now that I have had a semester back at home, I am really starting to focus more on the certain niche markets for livestock. Like now the "mini goats" are a thing. So I am slowly switching my Market Show Boer herd, to now have a few Polled blue eyed Nigerian Dwarfs. Then planning to go to Milking bred Nigerian Dwarfs and other Milking breeds also, then trying to do the soaps and other stuff just for fun and see where that goes.

Another are the Mini Cattle Breeds or AGH and Kune Kune Hogs. Sell breeding stock chicks, turkey, chickens, and ducks, etc.

Love the full size horses, but I think I might use my small stature to my advantage and hopefully get to the point where I can train a few POA/Welsh type horses to be kids ponies. Or maybe start with Show quality miniature horses since they eat less.

My life goals are pretty much just to have a farm that can support itself, instead of sucking money down the drain.

I'm a big worrier. So the nursing thing was very stable idea, easy to get a job anywhere, plenty income to support myself. I do have to say that I am proud that went a different direction, because as stable as it is, I don't think I would be happy. But with anything in ag, you really never know how something is going to work out. So it's scary to just move off and do something.

I love having y'all to talk through this with. It's been driving be crazy thinking about it since I came back home this spring. Seems not many people have the same idea of happiness, so when I try to explain the direction I want to go in, most people don't understand. Glad to have all y'all that have the same passion.

 

[itsasmallfarm]

was supposed to graduate 2017 but i suffer with anxiety so am still in school (well doing online classes) guess i get a few extra years to decide

all i know is a want a farm and to trap animals lol

 

[Harmony Fowl]

My plans, I have been raised in a farming small town. With grandparents and great grandparent that all farmed. And that stopped with my parents generation and siblings.

I was really big into agriculture as a kid. Started producing my own goat herd at 8 when my grandparents gave me my first set of bottle babies, and it grew from there. Around that time the chickens and rabbits became mine, and first got started incubating anything and everything and selling it at auction or feed stores. At 10 I got a rescue horse to nurse back to health, so that started the horses.

In middle and highschool I was big in FFA and 4H. Was able to try out all kinds of livestock, that I am greatful for now. I have already made all the mistakes there are to make, so I am prepared for when I start my own farm up.

In early highschool I got my first ABCA Border Collie, and trained her to work like a dream. I had my first ABCA litter from her this year, and also bought another pup to train. I really love working dogs. And have had an offer to go do an paid internship type thing with a sheepdog trainer from out of state. Which I would love, but it is scary leaving everything I know. But that's an option too. They do boarding, dog training, herding training, grooming. I would love to start something like that one day. But like y'all mentioned, what job do I have to do to get to that point.

Now that I have had a semester back at home, I am really starting to focus more on the certain niche markets for livestock. Like now the "mini goats" are a thing. So I am slowly switching my Market Show Boer herd, to now have a few Polled blue eyed Nigerian Dwarfs. Then planning to go to Milking bred Nigerian Dwarfs and other Milking breeds also, then trying to do the soaps and other stuff just for fun and see where that goes.

Another are the Mini Cattle Breeds or AGH and Kune Kune Hogs. Sell breeding stock chicks, turkey, chickens, and ducks, etc.

Love the full size horses, but I think I might use my small stature to my advantage and hopefully get to the point where I can train a few POA/Welsh type horses to be kids ponies. Or maybe start with Show quality miniature horses since they eat less.

My life goals are pretty much just to have a farm that can support itself, instead of sucking money down the drain.

I'm a big worrier. So the nursing thing was very stable idea, easy to get a job anywhere, plenty income to support myself. I do have to say that I am proud that went a different direction, because as stable as it is, I don't think I would be happy. But with anything in ag, you really never know how something is going to work out. So it's scary to just move off and do something.

I love having y'all to talk through this with. It's been driving be crazy thinking about it since I came back home this spring. Seems not many people have the same idea of happiness, so when I try to explain the direction I want to go in, most people don't understand. Glad to have all y'all that have the same passion.

I’m really impressed with your experience. I wish I had half of that! No wonder you have such a sense of the niches you want to fill with your farm: you’re already immersed in that world. Whatever you do, don’t change that. As if anything could stop you from animals, right? I really think making your passion profitable means finding a job that you enjoy that also furthers your knowledge and experience. A job is not a lifetime commitment. It’s okay to stay at a job for only a year or two and move on if you want to. The idea that a paycheck is enough in the way of compensation for our time and talents is flawed. If the job offers you new experience and then you get that experience and want other experience, that’s your prerogative.

However, it does occur to me that something like phlebotomy or becoming a vet tech would not only provide you practical experience but also give you a fallback in case you need one.

 

[psychocircus91]

My answer may be an unpopular one, but if you've started the ground work for nursing, finish it.
Yes, it will be immensely tough at first, but it will open up many doors. I went through the same thing in the occupational therapy field.
There are so many paths you can take after you get your foot in the door.. Hospitals, nursing homes, schools, ALFs, psychiatric facilities, home health.
You can work full time, part time, PRN. Whatever your preference. (And many full time nurses only work 3 days a week).
Clinical can be tough, and down right scary, but worst case scenario, if things don't work out you're right back where you are now.
If five years from now, you decide NONE of those options work for you, explore alternatives, but work your butt off while you're young so you don't have to as much when you're older.

 

[black_dove2]

So I am at that fun age in life where the decisions I make now, will effect me forever...no pressure lol. So this is going to be a long one, call it my life story haha. I just really need some advice.

I graduated highschool in 2016 with my CNA, and plans to go into nursing- sounded great at the time, would be able to make a good living and have time and money to have my farm, and loved bio and anatomy.

I went to my dream school (happened to be an ag school that had nursing, so best of both worlds). I went there for my first year and loved the school, loved the classes and people. But the thought of clinicals aproaching (what would have been this fall 2017) scared me into changing my mind.

So in fear that I might get into the nursing program, spend all that money, then drop it in a month because I might hate it...instead I moved back home after the spring semester of my first year. I planned to pick up a few classes from the tech school back home, and get phlebotomy certified. If I liked the phlebotomy enough that I wanted to further the med field, I would work as a phlebotomist until the next fall 2018 and finish my second year of Nursing and graduate spring 2019 with my ASN, then a one year fast track to BSN.

One thing led to the next, and my wonderful advisors messed up my class registration two semesters in a row. So I couldn't be signed up for phlebotomy fall 2017 as planned, then this semester they did the same thing and I can't be enrolled for the spring 2018 program either. I have all my prereqs already, just needed the one clinical class that is already filled.

Thing is, even without taking the phlebotomy, this semester off with me working and volunteering made me realize nursing just isn't for me. The question is, where do I go from here? I thought if all else fails and I don't like nursing, at least I will have my phlebotomy cert until I figure out what to do next. But now I don't even have that.

There are aptitude tested one can take. It may bring to your attention a career you hadn't considered that will build on the classes and experience you already have.

I think volunteering and/,or shadowing is a great option. This will give you a real world eye of what a job entails and you we'll know right away if it is something you can see yourself doing.

What are you passionate about? What do you see yourself doing when thinking about a career? With one person, a team or alone.

Hands on or research and lab work or something else entirely?

Good luck to you and well wishes!

 

[Perry17]

That's the thing...

I only have 1 year of nursing classes until I get my ASN, which is solely actual nursing related classes, skills, and clinicals. (But I have been out of classes for half a year, so I feel like I have forgotten a lot too) So I feel like its a waste to not just toughen up and finish, with at least my ASN. The working 3 days a week was also a major plus. It will be great to have, but it's a lot of time and money to put in, when I might just hate it or get too overwhelmed with it all. The brain side of me says it's dumb not to finish.

I have worked in a Nursing Home doing clinicals when I was getting my CNA license. And I worked as a CNA making home visits and sitting with my teachers elderly mother. I loved it, but was to small to confidently move, assist, or lift most of the people in the Nursing home. I just didn't think I could do it efficiently enough to be left alone with a really dependent person. Low self confidence probably doesn't help that either.

But I have way more confidence in myself when it pertains to animals. Maybe that's why I keep considering something in another field, animals are the only thing I know I am capable of no matter what the job.

The vet assistant/vet tech route- I assisted with one surgery last week, a deer dog beagle that accidentally stumbled up on a wild hog. Tore the poor things chest to pieces and peirced straight to the lungs. But I absolutely loved getting to be that hands on and helping out. Only two minutes in, and I told her she has ruined the med field for me because I already fell in love with the vet work. But is it worth it to go into that if I will barely be making a living? I mean how much is it to live? When I don't even know what part of the country I will end up in.

I guess it's easier with an animal, an actual humans life is a much greater risk and that is the part that scared me about nursing. My pharmacology class for nursing was pretty much a whole semester learning how many ways there are to injure or kill someone on accident. I guess they do it meaning to scare you enough to quit, but let me tell you, it really did work on me.

The vet tech would be great to go towards a boarding/training kennel in the future. I am really hoping I can visit those sheepdog kennels for at least a few days, sometime soon. But that is something that will take a few years of working and saving before that's an option. And it will have to be after I decide where I want to live, because if I am taking the time to set up a kennel and facility, I will be there forever.

 

[Perry17]

I'm not really directing these posts to anyone, let me know if I miss a question. I'm just kind of ranting the thousands of thoughts that have been flying around my head for the past year.

The more I think of it, as cheesy as it sounds lol, you really do only live once. And I am just now realizing how true that is. Every second that goes by is a second lost, can't go back and do something different once it has already been done. And 10 years down the line I won't be able to go back and change the decision I am making now. Maybe I will hate myself in the future for not finishing the nursing, maybe I will hate myself if I look back and think why didn't I do something animal related when that's what I loved doing. I just assumed when I was younger that everything would work itself out, but now I realize sitting here waiting on something isn't going g to work. I just have to pick something and start working towards it.

 

[black_dove2]

That's the thing...

I only have 1 year of nursing classes until I get my ASN, which is solely actual nursing related classes, skills, and clinicals. (But I have been out of classes for half a year, so I feel like I have forgotten a lot too) So I feel like its a waste to not just toughen up and finish, with at least my ASN. The working 3 days a week was also a major plus. It will be great to have, but it's a lot of time and money to put in, when I might just hate it or get too overwhelmed with it all. The brain side of me says it's dumb not to finish.

I have worked in a Nursing Home doing clinicals when I was getting my CNA license. And I worked as a CNA making home visits and sitting with my teachers elderly mother. I loved it, but was to small to confidently move, assist, or lift most of the people in the Nursing home. I just didn't think I could do it efficiently enough to be left alone with a really dependent person. Low self confidence probably doesn't help that either.

But I have way more confidence in myself when it pertains to animals. Maybe that's why I keep considering something in another field, animals are the only thing I know I am capable of no matter what the job.

The vet assistant/vet tech route- I assisted with one surgery last week, a deer dog beagle that accidentally stumbled up on a wild hog. Tore the poor things chest to pieces and peirced straight to the lungs. But I absolutely loved getting to be that hands on and helping out. Only two minutes in, and I told her she has ruined the med field for me because I already fell in love with the vet work. But is it worth it to go into that if I will barely be making a living? I mean how much is it to live? When I don't even know what part of the country I will end up in.

I guess it's easier with an animal, an actual humans life is a much greater risk and that is the part that scared me about nursing. My pharmacology class for nursing was pretty much a whole semester learning how many ways there are to injure or kill someone on accident. I guess they do it meaning to scare you enough to quit, but let me tell you, it really did work on me.

The vet tech would be great to go towards a boarding/training kennel in the future. I am really hoping I can visit those sheepdog kennels for at least a few days, sometime soon. But that is something that will take a few years of working and saving before that's an option. And it will have to be after I decide where I want to live, because if I am taking the time to set up a kennel and facility, I will be there forever.

Can any of your courses be applied to vet tech? Can you finish degree you started and work as vet tech part time?

 

[chickencheeper]

Zoology maybe? Or wildlife vet?

 

[Perry17]

Vet Assistant I wouldn't need any more schooling at all. Vet Tech I could do online and work with a vet for experience, or go off to a tech school and get all the hands on experience there which would be amazing (the tech school I'm at for phlebotomy doesn't offer it). And from what I am gathering, there isnt much of a salary difference between the two. But neither are great salaries, but I guess the question is, is that enough of a salary to keep food on my table.

Just pretending my farm business will slowly build itself up without requiring input from my actual job salary. Who knows, maybe if I keep myself busy in a vet office, I won't even want to raise that high number of animals later on.

I have all the basic courses for most degrees, with a little extra in the anatomy and bio side. So I shouldn't have many classes to take to become a vet tech.

With the nursing, they told me before I left that they don't want me to take any extra classes, and I need to quit any job I have when going through the actual nursing program. Said that's the only thing I need to focus on if I plan to pass (yea my advisor was such a great encourager ).

I know it sounds bad, but I almost wish I didn't have a choice. Like someone could just decide for me, so I can't blame myself later on in life.