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A veterinary blog for pet lovers, vet voyeurs and the medically curious...
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You’ve wanted to be a vet forever. That’s why you spent every last summer in memory working with animals. You made the grade in college by turning down party after party. You suffered the nailbitingly stressful application and acceptance process. You survived anatomy and physiology in year one and endless pathology coursework in year two only to wake up to a crisis of conscience in years three and four:
Am I doing the right thing? Is this what I want for my life?
DVM Newsmagazine addressed the issue this month with a splashy cover piece. The issue seems suddenly newsworthy. Here’s why:
Though it can come at any time in your career, the first hint of crisis inevitably occurs when your student loan correspondence begins to arrive with ever-gargantuan numbers attached. For some it’s no surprise. It’s what you expected when you entered the field. “Gotta pay to play,” as they say.
For others, it sounds the death knell of impending reality. Acute onset of awareness can be unexpectedly chilling—especially if you’re a risk averse individual.
Factor in the humanitarian coursework most vet schools offer to help you face that reality (scary stuff!) and the angst can become almost unbearable. It’s enough to make you long for a transfer to medical school (not an unreasonable leap after a vet student’s second year) or change course altogether.
Indeed, many a vet student re-evaluates his or her position after catching a breath before the third year and its relatively less strenuous work commences. Until then, it seems most vets-to-be don’t come up for air, caught up in the workload and the whirlwind of a novel scholastic experience as we are.
Eventually, however, reality does bite. When it does, it can grab hold with a vengeance, tearing your aspirations to shreds in its merciless maw.
I know what you’re thinking: “Dr. Khuly can be soooo dramatic when she wants to be.”
Nonetheless, it’s true that with each passing year more and more students opt out of their prospective careers in veterinary medicine mid-stream. More vets cross-train away from practice. Increasing numbers go back to school and get unrelated degrees. They realize this field just won’t meet their personal goals, much as they might cherish the vision of a life in veterinary medicine.
In some ways, that’s a good thing. We need a mechanism for “weedout” that goes beyond the academic rigor vet school provides. But it still hurts to know we may be losing some of our best and brightest over the “grass is greener” phenomenon. Is it really better to be a human doc? A lawyer? A banker?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t denigrate the choices of those who veer awayafter working so hard to get into vet school. It’s not for everyone—especially not when vet indebtedness is increasing at a clip disproportionate to our salaries. Not when respect for veterinarians is on the decline.
In fact the trend indicates there will come a time when veterinary medicine is no longer a rational financial option for many would-be veterinarians. So why suffer the rest of the industry’s issues?
My take? I like to think vet medicine has been a less than rational choice for decades, what with all the irrational exuberance it takes to tackle the profession’s basic challenges. But it’s the oft-cited unfavorable debt to income ratio that seems to get to vet students most.
After all, many of us could have elected more lucrative paths. Yet we chose veterinary medicine for its inherent charms. That’s why I believe that money has less and less to do with why we vets choose this life for ourselves.
But let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not so bad. I live well. Embarrassingly, I do so paycheck to paycheck and not without the stress of my creditors raising their interest rates, fear of taking time off or falling ill, and worries about the inexorable increase in my property taxes. But I’m not really suffering—not while I can still pay for my kid’s braces and a pair of new running shoes when I want them.
For the sacrifice and expense of a veterinary education (OK, tack on the MBA while you’re at it) I could’ve been soaring well above a $300K salary by now in a reasonably conservative career track. But no, I chose lifestyle over money. And maybe that’s not so rational by US standards of success but it’s what vet students elect to do daily.
Giving it all up is not the worst thing someone could do. I wouldn’t blame them if the field didn’t offer enough of a draw. But for my money (opportunity cost counts) I’ll keep on losing big in the long run—and I’ll continue to do so happily...as long as my writing career takes off!
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Did you always want to be a vet or vet technician? Thinking about it? Working on it? Need some Help?
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"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
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- Mohandas Gandhi
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And even better your mid-life crisis is buying a goat. Much cheaper than a sports car. :-)
I have one niece soon to complete her master's, and will enter the job market at a starting salary of $30k + - ; another-- a first year undergrad, her tuition is $40k+/yr (I sure hope she picks her major wisely!); and yet another waiting upon acceptance/financial packages offered to make her decision.
I forget where I read that the competition for vet school is stiffer than any other medical field (Dr. Khuly---you probably know those statistics??) I can see some advantages as a new vet graduate, flexibility entering the field, no horrendous "startup practice" costs on top if desired, and no huge malpractice insurance premiums.
Education and Medical care costs are just way out of control !!
There's no way I'd quit tho. This IS my second career after giving up on other choices, more like a "three times the charm" choice. I can't fault people for their frustrations, but I'm definitely out of options myself.
I cannot fathom how starting veterinarians can service their debt. The repayments over 20 years on this average debt are around $800/mo @ 8.00%. After-tax income on $55,000/yr is around $3,000 to $3,600/mo, depending where you live and what have you. So roughly 20 to 25% of after-tax income goes to service a loan that will take decades to pay off. Factor in other expenses such as rent/mortgage, car, having kids, etc, and I find it hard to see how anyone could say your typical veterinarian is a moneygrubber.
I have friends who are just now finishing their internships in all sorts of weird and wonderful things on the human side and they may have $200k in debt but once they are board certified their salaries jump from $40k to $250 - 300k/yr, making debt service that much easier. Veterinarians have a tougher climb.
That number is one reason I'm trying to join the Army vet corps. They guarantee me a decent starting wage and job, as well as money while I'm in school. It also makes Banfield and other corporate jobs look pretty damn good since they've got the money and give decent benefits, even if it's not the job I've envisioned since I was a kid. I don't know that any of my classmates want to have their own practice. Maybe that was a common goal in the past, but now most of us will be happy to get our loans paid off before we retire, especially for those that decided to go to vet school as a second career.
Not only do we keep having professional skills courses about our indebtedness, but recently we've had talks about animal abuse, recognizing when children or women in the home are being abused (since animal abuse is often linked to other types of abuse), compassion fatigue, and reasons why a vet might lose his/her license or get sued.
Why do I want to do this again?
I guess to put it in perspective, when I was looking into going into school to be a respiratory therapist and I saw someone actually say "how can you be expected to live on, at the most, $70,000 a year?", I wanted to find their house and piss in their cheerios, lol.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but this subject always seemes to amuse and annoy me.
I think the hard part for many young professionals, as Dr. Patty noted, is that you grow up accustomed to a certain standard of living. Mine was not frugal, it was more of the 'whatever you want' variety. And the transition to a very different lifestyle can be a little bumpy. It's not really a matter of "boo hoo", I'm not crying because I don't have Chanel sunglasses, I'm crying because I have no ability to save money without giving up basic necessities (like food! or healthcare! or dental care! or my mortgage!) unless I uproot my life and move to.....I dunno.....some place a lot less expensive. Wherever that is. At the same time I am guilty because I didn't think long and hard about the realities of my chosen profession's earning scale coupled with massive student loans (and ours are only for graduate educations). In hindsight, I would not repeat the direction I've taken. At the same time, it's a pretty great direction, so I'm not complaining. At least not ALL the time! ;)
I was raised in a far too luxurious lifestyle and my parents spent far too much money on me and my sister than was rational. The only thing I got out of it was becoming a spoiled brat who upon moving out become severely depressed at the gigantic drop in living standards. Even my parents couldn't afford the way they raised me and are having trouble finding money for their retirement. After all of that, I consider it a luxury to enjoy your job, be able to pay your bills and sleep soundly at night.
Like Stefani, my major expenditures are for my pets. A lot of people look at me funny when I say I'll eat Ramen noodles before I'll lower the quality of food to that of Purina or 'Ol Roy and skimp on things like dentals, annual PE, etc.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=5...
30% of respondents expect to be $200,000+ in debt when they finish... ouch.