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I’m just in my second year, but I can’t help but constantly be worried about what to do after graduation. I want to go into shelter medicine (i know my mind can change), however, I’m finding that mentorship in that area is very limited. At least, quality mentorship. The shelter back home, who I’ve been working with since high school, is tossing around the idea of wanting to hire me when I graduate since they’re drowning with one doctor. However- this one doctor, even though he has been a great mentor for me, has never mentored a new grad. I fear if I come in as a newbie fresh out of school (I know I will need a lot of hand holding because my confidence is terrible) it’ll be too much for him to handle training me, caring for the shelter animals, and managing the low cost services to the community. I’m so scared of going somewhere and picking up bad habits or not getting good guidance, especially with shelter med. I’ve laid out my different options, but I get varying responses depending on who I talk to. My options are: keep shadowing/externing at different shelters and seeing what the mentorship is like and possibly land a job there, go through the match process and do a (rotating? specialty shelter medicine?) internship, or start out in some GP setting (some shelter vets recommended this, even though zero part of me wants to do GP). Idk what I’m really asking here, I guess any advice on how to proceed. Literally every shelter vet I talk to tells me something different and I really want to make sure I start out strong when I graduate. I know it’s a bit early to be worried, but if I choose the match route (i also have no idea how competitive shelter med internships are??) then I need to start getting involved with stuff / make connections because right now I’m kinda just floating by …
