Life on the Wild Side
A new grad trying to figure out life after school. |
I started my career as most animal enthusiasts do – pursuing veterinary school. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that vet school wasn’t my calling – and that’s okay. While the vet path wasn’t for me, it did serve as an entry point to other, less mainstream career paths working with animals. If vet med is your passion – great. If it’s not, that’s great too. The trick is to be honest with yourself; don’t remain on a path only because it seemed like the right one at first. This requires more courage than it may seem (or, if you’re like me, this seems plenty scary). I was at a dinner with undergraduates and current vet students when I first knew. The vet students were discussing obscure diseases and unrecognizable organs when an undergrad turns to me and says, “I can’t wait to understand what they’re talking about!” Here she was, bright eyed and excited, and all I could think was, “I can.” I couldn’t care less. And this was the moment I realized I needed to rethink my life. The choice to not apply to vet school saved me a lot of headaches; I no longer needed to reach a certain number of hours in a clinic or fit several required classes into my schedule. However, I had lost my certainty. Applying to vet school involves a fairly clear, determined pathway and makes answering the dreaded question of, “What are you doing after you graduate?”, a lot easier. Veering off the vet path left me with no answers, no guidelines, and an urgency to find both. I knew to be successful in my field, and employable, I would need a PhD. My greatest struggle was being unable to pinpoint exactly what I was passionate about or what I would study. So as an undergrad, I resisted the urge to jump around to different research labs and instead invested in one project that allowed me to gain valuable, transferable research skills. It became more about learning skills that I could apply to any work, and less about the subject matter (although researching elephant behavior wasn’t all that bad). I learned to focus on building up marketable strengths and skills while maintaining a healthy degree of self-compassion. I would not be applying to graduate school in time to start right after my undergraduate graduation. There are few things more unsettling than graduating college without a clue as to where you will be or what you will be doing. But this was also a blessing in disguise, and something we’ll talk more about later. So the take away? You may need to rethink your life too. Harsh? Probably. It’s not a comfortable position to be in, I know. But this decision led me down a new path that now allows me to study something I really care about. For this reason, I believe it is incredibly important to share my journey and what I’ve learned along the way (either from advice I’ve received or lessons learned the hard way). Buckle in; we’re about to take the path less traveled.
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AuthorKatie is rotating intern at Atlantic Veterinary College in Canada. She graduated from veterinary school at UC Davis in 2018. Archives
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