Shadowing a Vet

[Heeeidii]

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Hi everyone,
So today I had the opportunity to shadow a vet and his tech around for about 4 hours. The reason I'm writing this is to ask if it is too soon to be shadowing? I will be starting my sophomore year of college in September. I'm asking this because when I was at the animal hospital today, all the technicians looked at my kind of funny when I tried explaining to them that I was shadowing. Is it not normal/advised to begin shadowing yet?
Also, the tech I was following today told me that she had just finished her undergrad and is spending a little time working before applying to vet school. Is that how most people go about it? Because I had always just assumed that I go straight from undergrad to vet school (granted that I get accepted somewhere).

Also - is there like an official way to document the number of hours you accumulate? Or do I just keep count myself?

 

[jtom]

Hi everyone,
So today I had the opportunity to shadow a vet and his tech around for about 4 hours. The reason I'm writing this is to ask if it is too soon to be shadowing? I will be starting my sophomore year of college in September. I'm asking this because when I was at the animal hospital today, all the technicians looked at my kind of funny when I tried explaining to them that I was shadowing. Is it not normal/advised to begin shadowing yet?
Also, the tech I was following today told me that she had just finished her undergrad and is spending a little time working before applying to vet school. Is that how most people go about it? Because I had always just assumed that I go straight from undergrad to vet school (granted that I get accepted somewhere).

Also - is there like an official way to document the number of hours you accumulate? Or do I just keep count myself?

No you are not weird. Alot of clinics do not allow people to shadow or no one has ever asked them to shadow, so the workers are not used to the term or have seen it before. I saw this a few times and it is completely normal. You will also find clinics that are used to this and do not look at you weird.

You can start school either right after undergrad or later. The norm is to do it right after undergrad but alot are older, I am 25 and applying this year, I graduated two years ago.

There is no official way to document your hours, I use a spreadsheet. The schools pretty much take you for your word when you report them on the application. At cornell you have to have a letter of evaluation from every experience you want to write down for it to really count for admissions so make sure you can get a letter there at some point for it to count.

 

[EveyG]

Hi Heeeidii-
It's never too early to start getting experience. When I applied I put down animal and vet experiences I had in high school. I don't know why they were giving you wierd looks. There is no official place for you to log your hours/experience. I would recommend a notebook or word document on which you can put the date, time, duration, location, contact info and description of each experience you have. You will LOVE yourself for putting in that effort when you fill out VMCAS.
Each person has thier own path on thier way to vet school. Just because the tech took time off doesn't mean you have to. If you get to senior year and you want to apply, just do it. A lot of people who wait feel that there are certain things that need to be worked on or changed before becoming a competitive candidate (ex. more hours, better grades, GRE scores, etc).
Good luck on your journey!

 

[SocialStigma]

It's definitely not too early - I started shadowing vets the summer after high school. And I know a lot of people who go straight from undergrad to vet school (myself included), or at least apply for the first time in their 3rd/4th year of undergrad. Some people take time off to work on upgrading prereqs/gaining more experience/retaking GRE etc.

I kept count of my vet/animal experience hours myself on an excel spreadsheet.

 

[JumpHigherLivie]

i started in highschool so definately not too early!

In addition to keeping track of my hours I also did a written log for all of my days... basically I kept a mini record for the patients that I saw with the vet while shaddowing and would sit down the night after and write things like "Tuna the cat was brought in for a large mass on the right side of her face. We did a physical exam and the temperature, heart rate and resp rate were normal (I would then look up what normal was if I didn't remember). The vet aspirated from the mass and determined that it was an abcess. We opened the abcess with a scalpal blade and lanced it. The wound was flushed with nolvasaan. Cat was put on X antibiotics for X days with a recheck recommended at X days." Followed by any random information the vet gave me about cat bite abcesses.

I did a lot of time with an equine vet, whhich resulted in a lot of talk time in the truck ... so at the end I had a section for random information and what not I learned that was not with a specific patient.

I think I started shadowing my freshman year in highschool and was pretty naive to the application process and my GOAL with this was so that if my hours were questioned or I was asked to demonstrate them in an interview i could show them my notebook with the corresponding hours and notes. it turned out to be a really great way to increase the retention rate of information that I learned though.