PreVet students, what's your class/work/experience hours schedule?

[FutureVet96]

I'm starting pre vet in the spring. A huge concern of mine is balancing work, school and getting the experience hours I need to apply to vet school. I'm nervous because it's hard to find online science classes due to labs (which are time consuming and makes it harder to work), be able to work to get animal hours in, and I want to start shadowing veterinarians for vet experience hours. How do you balance school, work, research, experience hours, etc? What's your schedule. I know it's not the same for everyone but it would be nice to get an idea of pre vet schedules.

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[johnsmith123]

Right now, I'm working ~20 hours a week, taking 16 credit hours, shadowing 4-10 hours a week, and doing club/extracurricular activities ~5 hours a week. This involves being on campus for about 10-12 hours a day Monday through Friday so it keeps me exceptionally busy. School is pretty much two full time jobs when you add in work and extracurriculars/shadowing so you have to expect to be overwhelmed at points. It is still possible to balance everything, but you just have to be willing to make some sacrifices.

 

[SportPonies]

@FutureVet96
Here's what I did (current first year vet student):

-I had about ~2000ish(? maybe more?) hours of training, riding, and working with horses at both a therapeutic riding stable and in hunter/jumper and eventing scenes before ever starting undergrad.
-I did not do ANY vet or animal related stuff during the school year. And frankly, if you can avoid it, I would suggest doing the same. School is busy enough as it is. I started working at a vet's office the summer after my sophomore year (though I suggest getting an earlier start on that if you can- like this upcoming summer, or winter break or something). The summers after my freshman and sophomore years, I also volunteered more at that therapeutic stable.
-I worked as an RA for the three years following my freshman year, which is part of the reason I didn't do any vet stuff during the school year. Being an RA at an understaffed university meant 30+ hour weeks of RA work outside of classes quite often, many sleepless nights, and missing study time the night before many, many exams.

All in all, I ended up with a respectable amount of hours, but by no means the amount of anyone that worked full time as a tech for many years. My suggestion is to focus on school when you're in school, and then just to cram as much experience (and varied experience, most importantly) into weekends you're free (pick up volunteering at a 5k here or there) and especially your school breaks. Any smidgen of hours you get counts!

 

[Polocrosse2017]

I'm taking 16 hours now and maybe ~5 to 10 hours clubs/EC in a week. I'm not working or shadowing right now because I have about 500 vet hours and over 1000 animal hours coming into college and a job already lined up with an equine vet for next summer. I study a good bit but also still have time to spend with my gf and fraternity and go to the football games. My grades are all high A's except for a B in Honors English (note to self - take regular English for second class!) but working on getting it up to an A. Next semester I plan on adding some research hours into my schedule (16 hours planned).

For me focusing on school this first year is a priority. My sciences (so far) are easier than I thought and English is harder.