Full time pre-vet student working during undergraduate

[LeahKesley]

Hello everyone!
I’m a biology major with a foreign language minor. On average I take 16 credit hours per semester and I am considering on applying to a entry veterinary position. I’m currently job shadowing at a local clinic during this pandemic and I’m mostly asking this question for those people who are in pre-vet and work at a veterinary clinic. I was looking at jobs on the job search site, and I saw that the Veterinary Assistant position was “full-time”. The fact that I do school full-time makes me wonder if a veterinary assistant position would be manageable. I also considered applying for a kennel job if that seems too much for me. But the problem is though— I prefer to be in a veterinary setting (since kennels are more animal experience than vet experience) and it would help with my veterinary hours. I was considering on negotiating with the employer if I get the time to but they may require a certain number of hours per week as some of my previous jobs did. Any ideas or help? Stating what you did personally as a pre-vet and working in a clinic could help too!

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[SnowJ]

Hello everyone!
I’m a biology major with a foreign language minor. On average I take 16 credit hours per semester and I am considering on applying to a entry veterinary position. I’m currently job shadowing at a local clinic during this pandemic and I’m mostly asking this question for those people who are in pre-vet and work at a veterinary clinic. I was looking at jobs on the job search site, and I saw that the Veterinary Assistant position was “full-time”. The fact that I do school full-time makes me wonder if a veterinary assistant position would be manageable. I also considered applying for a kennel job if that seems too much for me. But the problem is though— I prefer to be in a veterinary setting (since kennels are more animal experience than vet experience) and it would help with my veterinary hours. I was considering on negotiating with the employer if I get the time to but they may require a certain number of hours per week as some of my previous jobs did. Any ideas or help? Stating what you did personally as a pre-vet and working in a clinic could help too!

This is partly going to come down to the clinic you are applying to and your personal working capacity. Some people are able to do full-time work and full-time school while maintaining good grades and good mental health, but that isn't the case for everyone. You will probably have to sacrifice personal and social time to keep up grades and work; whether that is acceptable or not is up to you. Remember that while having a lot of veterinary hours is a great thing, variety is also important. You may be better off keeping a lower-hour position and getting to shadow at a wider variety of clinics to get a broader feel for the profession, or getting broader volunteer experiences.

For me personally, when I was doing that level of credit load per semester it wasn't possible for me to work full-time at a clinic. Since the place I worked at was not open 24/7 It was physically impossible for me to be present that much without working every single day, and that isn't sustainable from a mental health perspective. I was able to maintain around 30 hours/week pretty sustainably. If I picked up hours for sick coworkers I quickly became exhausted. This is probably a bit different with online schooling, but I had to keep the commute between work and school in mind at the time. I also had a relationship with my now-husband to maintain.

You can always reach out to the place you want to apply to and ask what hours they are expecting. It's useful to know whether they require nights and weekends as well, as that will change how much you can fit around your schoolwork. Note that Vet Assistant is a part-time position at many clinics, so you can definitely look out for other similar positions if their expected commitment will not work for you.

 

[CoffeeQuestionMark]

When I was in school I tried working full-time (they defined full time as 30+ hrs/wk) and did 3-10 HR graveyard shift/wk. It was horrible. I later took a part time job at a clinic and worked about 15 hours/wk there, + about 10 hours/wk combined at some non-vet jobs that I couldn't bring myself to quit.

This was doable until my school commute became too much and then I dropped to working about 15 hours/week only.

I think if you don't have a commute, 30 hrs would be OK, but I don't recommend working a 40 HR job.

 

[max_wildlife]

Hello everyone!
I’m a biology major with a foreign language minor. On average I take 16 credit hours per semester and I am considering on applying to a entry veterinary position. I’m currently job shadowing at a local clinic during this pandemic and I’m mostly asking this question for those people who are in pre-vet and work at a veterinary clinic. I was looking at jobs on the job search site, and I saw that the Veterinary Assistant position was “full-time”. The fact that I do school full-time makes me wonder if a veterinary assistant position would be manageable. I also considered applying for a kennel job if that seems too much for me. But the problem is though— I prefer to be in a veterinary setting (since kennels are more animal experience than vet experience) and it would help with my veterinary hours. I was considering on negotiating with the employer if I get the time to but they may require a certain number of hours per week as some of my previous jobs did. Any ideas or help? Stating what you did personally as a pre-vet and working in a clinic could help too!

every person is different. lots of variables too. when i was taking a&p last year i had to drop from working 27hrs to 18hrs per week at my clinic. school was in-person, my commute was 1.5hrs each direction, and i was strung out constantly. when i switched to my seasonal ecology job for the summer and then fall clinical rotations i worked 15-20hrs per week. at this point i was taking 17 credits including organic chemistry (my weakest subject), and oddly did super well. i think it's because school was online and i could better take notes and manage my time.

i personally couldn't do full-time work and full-time school. but if you do decide to try it, my advice is to cut early and reassess if you notice it's not working out early on.

 

[battie]

I averaged 17 credits per semester during undergrad and worked 10-15 hrs/week on campus at the convenience store and additional hours as an RA (varied week per week, but probablywas between 15 and 20). I was also able to study on the job as an RA and adjust that schedule around tests or projects. If the c store was slow, I studied then as well. That was too much and I regret that amount of time I spent working now and can't imagine having a commute on top of that.

I know plenty of people that did work 30+ hours and maintained good enough grades to get in. I was not one of those people. So give a lot consideration to your time management skills and the difficulty of the classes you'll have. As much as vet experience is important for your application, grades do still matter just as much at a lot of schools (or more so at some). No point getting that specific vet med job if your grades are going to suffer too much.

 

[PetVet23]

I'm a second year vet student but feel like I can offer some advice here because I worked at a vet clinic while I was in undergrad, and will say that there are a lot of things to consider here.

Everyone is different in how they handle workloads, I personally couldn't have done anything full-time. I took 16-18 credit hours per semester and there's no way I could have worked 40 hours a week on top of that. The other thing to consider with that is if they would be flexible and willing to work around your class schedule. I think the most I worked while I was in undergrad was maybe 10-15 hours a week. I probably could have done a little more, but was also working in one of our biochem research labs.

You also have to consider that if you haven't had any previous work experience in vet med it might be difficult to get a job as a vet assistant right off the bat. I had been shadowing the vet I work with for years, but when I was hired I worked in kennel for about a year before they trained me to be a vet assistant.

 

[PrionPerson]

I had several jobs throughout undergrad and averaged 50-60 hours a week on top of taking 16-18 credits a semester. Unless you need to work full time to financially support yourself (my circumstance) I do not recommend taking on that workload. I scraped out of undergrad with a 3.3 GPA and several mental health crises and got rejected from vet school my first time applying.
I ended up finding a research assistant position that covered my tuition (for a masters) and paid me a stipend, which significantly helped my financial situation. Suddenly I'm a 4.0 student in grad school and I just got into my dream vet school.

Learn from my mistakes. Some people may be able to do it but I wasn't one of them and I also have never met them.