Looking for advice: Wait or Go?

[sevvet]

Hi all!

I'm looking for some advice/opinions so I will try to keep the background very brief:
I am currently 8 months into my year-long internship at a zoo hospital. I've been accepted (and plan to go to) St. George's, but their Fall 2022 class is full so I'm slated for January 2023 unless they pull me off the list. LONG story short, my boss, the head veterinarian, offered me my internship for another year if I wanted to defer my acceptance to NEXT Fall, 2023. Because there is only one intern position, I need to decide sooner than later if we are giving it to someone else or not.

I guess my question is: Does anyone have any advice? Should I keep my (PAID) zoo internship and accumulate more experience? Or, get started with my degree ASAP? I've heard to avoid a January start date because it messes up internship timelines after graduating. Does anyone have any experience with this? If I commit to January and stay on the waitlist, what will I do for six months after this position ends? Open to thoughts and suggestions, thank you in advance!

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[BigCats]

I don't have a lot of knowledge about different start dates, so I'll leave that for others to advise you on, but if you do decide to wait for the January start date and are looking for another zoo hospital internship to fill your time that fall, I can recommend you one that I did that offers housing and a stipend. Their application deadline for the fall internship is pretty late in the summer too, so you could have time to see if you get pulled off the waitlist for Fall 2022. Feel free to PM me if you'd like more info

 

[SprucetheGoose]

Hi all!

I'm looking for some advice/opinions so I will try to keep the background very brief:
I am currently 8 months into my year-long internship at a zoo hospital. I've been accepted (and plan to go to) St. George's, but their Fall 2022 class is full so I'm slated for January 2023 unless they pull me off the list. LONG story short, my boss, the head veterinarian, offered me my internship for another year if I wanted to defer my acceptance to NEXT Fall, 2023. Because there is only one intern position, I need to decide sooner than later if we are giving it to someone else or not.

I guess my question is: Does anyone have any advice? Should I keep my (PAID) zoo internship and accumulate more experience? Or, get started with my degree ASAP? I've heard to avoid a January start date because it messes up internship timelines after graduating. Does anyone have any experience with this? If I commit to January and stay on the waitlist, what will I do for six months after this position ends? Open to thoughts and suggestions, thank you in advance!

Totally up to you, but I think it makes a lot of sense to stay in a paid internship that is giving you great experience and start in Fall 2023! It’s awesome the head veterinarian wants you back and it seems really valuable to continue gaining experience and building that relationship while earning money. I don’t know your situation personally, but I can’t think of any downsides to delaying your degree by 6 months to a more traditional timeline (Fall start). That’ll fly right by and you’ll gain an extra year of great experience. Best of luck whatever you decide!

 

[battie]

The sooner you start school, the sooner you can start working. There are students in every semester from the island schools that go on to do internships. And between now and then, you may decide an internship is not for you. In that case, is a post-undergrad internship worth waiting almost a year to start getting paid doctor money? No. Not really.

 

[Trilt]

I guess my question is: Does anyone have any advice? Should I keep my (PAID) zoo internship and accumulate more experience? Or, get started with my degree ASAP? I've heard to avoid a January start date because it messes up internship timelines after graduating. Does anyone have any experience with this? If I commit to January and stay on the waitlist, what will I do for six months after this position ends? Open to thoughts and suggestions, thank you in advance!

What are your life goals, and is an additional year of experience in your position going to contribute? (aka do you plan to pursue zoo work as a career, and would the additional year perhaps have you to be more involved in a research project, or spearhead/collaborate a lot with others?) If it's going to be the same job with the same people with no further responsibilities, then it's kind of just more of the same and I'd get my butt to vet school. If there's further steps and it's going to help with your big career interests going forward, that's a different story.

 

[honeypot999]

I'm in a similar boat to you about what to do about SGU, but with getting a master's and reapplying for a fall acceptance, but I'm most likely still going to put down the deposit. However, I wouldn't delay the acceptance any futher because the experience will mean realitively nothing unless you're reapplying to vet school. Additionally, I don't think you can differ your acceptance for SGU until Fall 2023, so that might be out of the equation entirely.

 

[sevvet]

What are your life goals, and is an additional year of experience in your position going to contribute? (aka do you plan to pursue zoo work as a career, and would the additional year perhaps have you to be more involved in a research project, or spearhead/collaborate a lot with others?) If it's going to be the same job with the same people with no further responsibilities, then it's kind of just more of the same and I'd get my butt to vet school. If there's further steps and it's going to help with your big career interests going forward, that's a different story.

Thanks for the feedback! That's really helpful to think about. The problem is, I have NO idea what kind of vet medicine I want to go into. I got a really good glimpse of zoo medicine this past year, but am not sold on it. However, if I decide I want to do zoo medicine in the future, I figured two years of experience would look good, but at the same time it's only a post-undergrad internship so I don't know how substantial that is.

 

[sevvet]

I'm in a similar boat to you about what to do about SGU, but with getting a master's and reapplying for a fall acceptance, but I'm most likely still going to put down the deposit. However, I wouldn't delay the acceptance any futher because the experience will mean realitively nothing unless you're reapplying to vet school. Additionally, I don't think you can differ your acceptance for SGU until Fall 2023, so that might be out of the equation entirely.

Just an FYI- I did reach out to the admissions team at SGU and asked! Gianna responded and said I could absolutely defer, I would just have to email back with the request in writing. (So if you were wanting a guaranteed Fall start, that's the way to do it!) I don't plan to reapply though, so that's a really good point, I guess I just like my job and don't want to give it up yet 😭

 

[JaynaAli]

I am not a zoo Med person but I question whether 1 year vs 2 years experience in a position would make that much of a difference? Like yes, more experience is good in general but what would you learn in year 2 that you weren’t exposed to in year 1? Especially if you’re not 100% sold (right now) on zoo med, I’d probably just go on to vet school and not defer. You can find some cool new experiences during vet school to help boost your application should you decide to pursue zoo med and if you decide to go a different way, you’ll be a year closer to making veterinarian salary.