Advice for Future

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cass12

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Hi,

I've been a lurker on this site for a few years, and I would love some advice.

I've been thinking about becoming a veterinarian since my junior year of high school. I've been shadowing at clinics and getting animal experience and lurking around here to get as much information as possible since then. I'm a sophomore in undergrad now.

I've known about the bad debt:income ratio for a while now, but I've still been pursuing vet med anyways. Recently though I've been questioning more about how much the debt will affect the all the decisions in my life. Job satisfaction and happiness are way more important to me than making a lot of money, but of course financial security and insecurity affects overall happiness a lot.

I have other interests outside of vet med that I want to do during my lifetime. I have a dream of opening an animal rescue. I want to travel, or at least go on vacations once a year. I don't need to be rich, but I want to be comfortable and not worried if I'll make it to the next paycheck. I'm scared those things will be unachievable if I sink myself into so much debt. So I decided that the debt was too much and to take vet med off the table and look at other career options. And now I feel really lost.

I'm trying to look into other careers, but I don't like any of them. Which I know sounds really bad, and I've seen that veterinary medicine isn't perfect, but if it weren't for the debt I think I would be very happy being a vet. So part of me thinks I should pursue it anyways. But the debt is there, it's not invisible, and I know that will factor into my future happiness.

I've also had the thought of starting my own business, because most of the aspects of other careers that don't appeal to me disappear if I'm my own boss. I think I have a good idea, but I don't need a biology degree to start a business, so I don't know what I'm doing in undergrad now. If I want to become a vet I need to start accumulating more veterinary hours and go back to shadowing.

I need to choose which path to take and they're very permanent forks in the road. Once I'm swamped in so much debt as a veterinarian there's no turning back, or once I've decided on a different route the feasibility of going to vet school also diminishes. It's hard for me to put so much effort into my classes right now with no idea of where I'm going.

If anyone has any thoughts or advice I'd love to hear it. Anything would help.

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Owning your own business, particularly in animal industries, isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be, either. My family has owned our own business (pet stores) for ~111 years and it has had a massive impact on me not really wanting to own my own business. There would have to be very specific criteria for me to own my own business that I think are probably pipe dream criteria.
 
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