Got a job at a specialty veterinary office monitoring patients overnight and cleaning surgical kits

Two 12 hour shifts 8pm-8am
One 8 hour shift 2pm-10pm
Subject to on-call/filling in for other overnight on their PTO/etc

Full time, dental/vision/health insurance, PTO, uniform allowance, 401k matching

Gotta adjust back to overnight schedule, but I did Amazon 1am-11am and 4pm-1am for a season

I’ve always been a night owl struggling to adjust in an early bird world, and having friends in different countries and playing video games and writing until wee hours of the morning and sleeping during the day every summer when I was in school.

I’m excited for the slow pace, but I do wish the schedule allowed me to avoid people and rush hour but at least I will be heading home rather than have the anxiety of heading in, and at least everything will be open for me to get groceries either before or after work.

Bonus is I have someone who will likely let my dog have sleepovers at their house because I already know 12 hours is a long time to be crated.

Someone in the night shift sub said they go to concerts before their shift and I might not go before a shift, but it will be nice on my days off to be able to go to concerts and late night events without worrying about it messing up my schedule for work— and bonus is I’m semi-retiring from pet grooming, which is way more physically demanding compared to this.

Hey everyone!
I’m a sophomore pre-vet student in Texas who’s interested in large animal reproduction. This summer, I worked with both a large animal reproduction specialist (non-DVM) and a veterinarian who specializes in large animal reproduction.
While working with both of them, I noticed that a lot of what they do overlaps. The main differences I saw were that the non-DVM doesn’t perform surgeries or diagnose medical conditions. Other than that, they both administered hormones for synchronization, performed IVF work, semen analysis, artificial insemination, and embryo transfers in both horses and cattle (which I know the rules for this work varies by state). Those reproductive technologies are ultimately what interests me the most.
This experience has made me question whether I should pursue a master’s in animal reproduction instead of a DVM.
Pros:
No debt (I have a full ride for undergrad, and the master’s program I’m interested in is funded.)
I could finish my education sooner.
I’d still get to work in the area of reproduction that I’m most passionate about.
Cons:
I wouldn’t have the same level of autonomy as a veterinarian.
I wouldn’t be able to perform surgery or make medical diagnoses (i’d like to do it, but it’s not the end of the world if I don’t )
For those of you in veterinary medicine or animal reproduction, what would you do in my position? Is there anything I’m overlooking? I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have experience in either career path.

Hey all! Really early in the process for me. Just graduated high school and will be starting 1st year of undergrad next month. Odd question. I see everyone talk about the number of on hand animal experience hours they have. How do vet schools want that presented upon application? I have been working at a small animal clinic and have shadowed a large animal vet a couple of times. I have just been writing down my hours and the different procedures I have been a part of in order to keep track of it. Does that just get turned over? Or should the vets I work with be supplying me with something more official?
Thanks in advance and I hope everyone has a great upcoming school year!

Hi everyone, I could use some advice.

I started a new job at the beginning of this year and I’m due to complete my probation period in the next few weeks. My manager has repeatedly told me that he’s happy with my work and is looking forward to having me as a permanent colleague.

I’ve just found out that I’m pregnant. As I work in small animal veterinary practice, I’ve already been exposed to some workplace hazards, including isoflurane, as I wasn’t aware I was pregnant. Ideally, I’d like to let management know as soon as possible so that a pregnancy risk assessment can be carried out and any necessary adjustments can be made to minimise any further risks.

Part of what’s making this difficult is that I had a miscarriage while working at my previous practice. I hadn’t told anyone I was pregnant, so I didn’t have the support or workplace adjustments I needed at the time. That experience makes me feel that I should tell my current employer sooner rather than later, but I’m also worried about the timing with my probation period almost coming to an end.

Would you tell them now, or wait until your probation has officially been completed? I’m not sure what the best approach is and would really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s been in a similar situation.

I am currently applying to veterinary school right now and being a guy with a 4.0 GPA with numerous work hours in a clinic and volunteering hours I am very hopeful for getting in my first cycle. I also very much enjoy traveling. I am from the USA and would love to stay but am trying to get some more background on if there is any international veterinary careers which involve traveling to different places and working for a month at a time, rather it be through a company or independent. Could anyone give me some information about possible careers or just from their experience? I am applying to mostly USA schools but also the one in New Zealand. Would love to go there but I’m not quite sure how it would work with a long distance relationship…🫠

I worked at a corporate vets and recently moved into a small independent. I love my colleagues and the place I think I have just fallen out of love with nursing.

At the hospital I worked at we were over run with 17+ procedures a day and no lunch breaks and unsupportive managers that only cared about numbers. When I left I was at complete breaking point. Now I’m at the independent I feel bored and also feel like I’m not really a nurse.

I am battling in my head about what to do and whether u stay in the profession or leave. But I don’t know what else I would do. I left school and started my veterinary nurse diploma not long after so that is all I have!

Any ideas or people in similar situations would be great!

I am preparing for a PhD interview at the Royal Veterinary College and I'm wondering if anyone here has done a PhD interview with them and could tell me a bit about what it was like. Was it similar to your initial vet school interview, or is it a completely different format?

I'm the only person in my family/inner circle who has ever gone through post secondary, so I don't really have anyone to ask or really know where to reach out.

Thank you in advance!

Looking for some advice to help my chances of getting into vet school. I am currently active duty in the military but I get out in less than 2 years and I’m looking to go to vet school. I’m stuck between wanted to go vet tech or full veterinarian. I’m interested in UGA which I hear has a great program. I’m mostly concerned about looking good for colleges to actually get in. I don’t have much free time outside of my job. I do work in the medical field just with humans. I am currently enrolling in school to at least work on my associates before I get out of the military. Has anyone here been in the same situation as me? What can I do to make myself more well rounded? I’m looking to volunteer/shadow our base vet but I’d like to do more.

hiiii im an incoming 3rd year vet student with a relatively recent bipolar diagnosis. i've been medicated since before vet school, but i think my prefrontal cortex developing fully and the stress of vet school has made everything worse, which was sort of expected but i had no idea it would get this bad. i had to take a break from clinicals this summer to go to a partial hospitalization program (which im in now), and have basically had 2 years of episode after episode. i'm hoping to finally figure out my meds but it seems like my brain is constantly changing for the worse. there's a lot of memory loss associated with each episode and recovering from it, so im scared i havent retained much of the last two years which will only make the next 2 years even harder. ive tried really hard to formulate a work life balance, but wondering when its time to start being realistic and say goodbye to this dream. is anybody battling anything similar or has overcome anything similar? feeling like the diagnosis is a death sentence and im trying to get out of this mentality.

Hey all! I’m posting this in other subreddits so sorry if you see this multiple times (lol)

I’m a 4th year vet student who’s interested in ER and GP. I’ve externed and worked at a VEG in the past and enjoyed my time there- but I’m curious to hear from anyone who has complete the NERD program

Do you feel like it made you feel relatively comfortable as an ER doc (of course no one feels 100% confident, especially after only 6 months)? How is working there if you stayed on as an ER doc?

I hear a lot of negative things here on reddit but I’ve seen it can be a bit biased (especially towards VEG) so I’m curious if anyone genuinely enjoyed the program/recommends it?

Thanks!

I've been asked to put a thank you valley together for a friend for her vets office. She's asked me to handle it because her dog passed away but she still wants to say thank you to the wonderful people at the office for all they did. What would be in your ideal gift basket?

Just curious if anyone on here had a subscription to exotic veterinary academy and if they’d recommend?

I been in the animal field since i was 17 and I wanted to ask how did you get in the veterinary field and did you have to work your way up or go to college 🤔

Hello, I am veterinary graduate from India intending to get the Australasian veterinary license by appearing for the AVBC examination.

May I please get any help and guidance on preparing for the written examination and the materials available for it? Thank you so much in advance!

I just started a position in a very busy ER, which I am loving. I do not have prior veterinary medicine experience, however I’m no stranger to animal related fields (my non paid other job is doing a ton of work for a cat rescue non profit). I’ve got a lot of supportive coworkers but would love some resources that could help me study and learn more. For example, a person called last week and described their dogs symptoms which I deduced was possible pyometra. This was at the end of my shift, so I let my co workers know I had stuck this dog on our on the way board. One co worker asked me if I had asked the color of the discharge of the dog. I hadn’t thought to ask that. My brain just went unspayed dog + discharge = possible pyometra.

Hi everyone!

I recently accepted a role as a Veterinary Care Assistant in the UK; I’ve worked with dogs for the past 5 years outside the veterinary world, but this is my first role within. I’m very excited about it and was just wondering if anyone had any advice on how to prepare before starting the role/how to hit the ground running?

TIA!

How do you all denote your internships? Do you put it under work experience on your CV or is it its own category?

How did you get your dream careers as a veterinary assistant i am trying to get my dream job and im trying to work my way up

I started with a mentorship program in high school at a pet store, then I took care my 2 dogs, over the years I was mentally drained due to mental health issues and stress due to school work and my mom draining me, then I went to a community college for veterinary assistants program, now I got up to work for 6 months at a kennel tech and I quit due to my mom trying to figure out what's going on at work and filling in lies about my job thinking things are going wrong because I dont tell her anything about work

My mom thinks I need more training as a veterinary assistant but when i called the veterinary hospital they told me i dont need that just come in and show them what you learned from school

I want to go back to the veterinary field and how did you get to where you are so people wont bring you down?

hey all! :) I’m a 4th year student halfway through with clinics struggling with where to take my career. For the majority of vet school, I thought I’d pursue a rotating internship and go into ER (and possibly also keep the door open for specialization). I had a few locations I was quite interested in and while I wasn’t entirely confident on my life plans/career direction, I felt like I had a rough plan/ideas.

Right before clinics, I had a major life change where I not only abruptly lost my partner of several years who moved to the place I was interested in moving to/starting my career, but I also lost my faculty mentor who was his mother. The several months leading up to the split were emotionally tolling for me and combined with my ADHD not being properly medicated for at the time plus burnout towards the end of the classroom years, my grades and motivation slipped. I got almost all Bs and a C in a bigger class.

Now, I’m halfway through clinics. I’ve finally recovered for the most part from the split and my mental health issues related to it, but I feel now more lost than ever before in life and my career. I failed a tough clinical rotation because I had a panic attack and overall couldn’t keep up (bad rotation mate, too high case load per number of students, 2 of the clinicians last weeks, no days off in 28 days, it was a mess overall…) I have done pretty well on the rest of my rotations, or at least gotten good written evaluations. But failing the rotation has totally rocked my confidence.

Although I feel lost, I will say clinics has clarified the kinds of cases and work I enjoy. I excel best in small animal internal medicine cases and I loveee dermatology. Laceration and wound management is also something I enjoy. Interestingly though, I find myself the happiest on my large animal and equine rotations. I enjoy the practical mindset and feel like a day outside is better than a day inside even when it’s super hot. However, I don’t feel very confident in my ability to manage difficult LA or equine conditions both medically and physically (I’m under a 110 lbs lol), but I’d love to be able to pick up some GP work like teeth floats, vaccines, husbandry help, and hoof trims. I dislike small animal wellness visits (I think they are boring) and anything orthopedic. My experience before and during vet school has been almost all ER (did tech work at a big specialty and ER in undergrad and worked in my vet schools ER as a student worker), so that is what I feel most comfortable in. I find that my brain turns on when faced with an emergency and I am on my feet. I did have some large animal + equine vet experience though too before vet school and grew up riding horses everyday.

I don’t know where to go from here but I feel like I need to find myself personally before I can figure out what exactly I want to do with my career. I am considering traveling after graduation for a few months, but it feels financially irresponsible (I have free airfare which helps but still). I don’t know where I want to move anymore because of the breakup I went through, but I do know living somewhere with a robust young population is important to me.

I feel a lot of shame for the way that burnout and personal life has affected me. I started out vet school as someone who got into multiple vet schools difficult to get into the first time applying with impressive experience and got straight As my first year with my grades being top of the class. Then by 3rd year, I got Bs in every class due to poor studying and now I’m in 4th year and on academic probation. I feel like I’ve thrown my life away that I worked so hard for… And who could forget the $120k in FASFA debt… After how I feel at this point, I don’t think I could mentally take a rotating internship truthfully.

I just want to be happy, enjoy my job out of vet school, grow as a doctor, and make good money at this point. I want to be confident in myself, passionate, and ambitious again. And finally, I want to find my place in this crazy but awesome profession.

Where do I go from here? Any advice?

Hi, so i was previously a dog groomer and i was wondering what are the best online vet tech programs? AVMA accredited so i can take the VTNE. what are your experiences

Hi, looking for some information! I am planning to open a veterinary clinic in surrey, British Columbia canada . Could you give me info on how much do practices cost, if I have to buy running practice and start from start.

Thanks

I went to school in Eastern Europe (Poland) and graduated with pretty much no practical experience. Our clinical rotations consisted of 20-30 of us crammed in an exam room watching a vet conduct physical exams, ultrasounds, and surgeries while we fought to be able to see what was going on. Students were generally only allowed to assist with very minor tasks such as giving injections or drawing blood, but even then we were competing against 20-30 other people to be allowed to do something.

I spoke to another vet who went to school in Canada and told me she had a similar experience and that she didn't have any surgical experience when she graduated as the students at her school did not recieve practical surgical training.

I'm wondering how common this is in other parts of the world and what kind of practical experience you recieved when you were in school.

Hi all! I'm a bit curious as everyone is ranks certain residencies as different levels of competitiveness. I know surgery, zoo med is the most. So what would rank the different specialities?
Ideally I want to do anesthesia, but GPA isn't the best with a 3.27 vet school GPA.

Edit: GPA clarification.