Do grades matter?

Do grades matter?

In vet school, for the average student who does not want to pursue any post vet school education, they do not.  There is some argument among students about this, but almost none among clinic owners.  As long as you make a C and pass your boards, that’s all you need.  They are more concerned with how you will be with clients than in your book learning.  As you can imagine, trying to get a group of students who has never made less than an "A" to believe this is quite difficult. There are a lot of undergraduate 4.0s in vet school. That being said vet school classes aren’t ridiculously hard to a group at this level, it is simply the volume of material that you have to remember and figuring out how to play the game for each class that is the challenge .

Again, the caveat to this is if you want to do an internship and residency after veterinary school… then they do matter.

Veterinarians can do a lot of different things for a living.  They can work with horses, food animals, zoo animals, birds, reptiles, or small mammals. They can go into research, academia, public health, or lab animal medicine. 

They say that you are likely to change your preference in vet school, but I am doubtful about this for myself.   I spent enough time with horse vets, food animal vets, and the zoo vet and working in a small animal practice to know that small animal medicine is what I want to do.  I am not a horse person or a cow person.  I am a dog, cat, bunny person.

Before I got to vet school, I thought that was the only decision I had to make.  My plan was going to work in a small animal clinic and then eventually own one.  I hadn’t really thought about specializing…  until now. 

When a veterinarian specializes they take on an additional internship and residency lasting about four more years after vet school.   So if I specialize that will mean 4 years of college, 1 year of business grad school, 4 years of veterinary school, 1 year of internship, and 3 years of residency…  For those of you who have been counting, that’s 13 years of post high school education.  That’s a lot. Any way I look at it that seems like too much.  But if it was easy everyone would do it, right?  I have a meeting later this week with one of my professors to talk about a surgical residency. I feel very torn.

In favor of a residency:  I will be earning a small salary (between 1/2 and 1/3 of full associates salary) during my internship and residency, which is better than paying to go to school.  I will have a significantly higher earning potential afterward.  I get to be a surgeon, and will likely have a more interesting job than just being a regular small animal practitioner.

Against a residency:  My full earnings will be delayed.  When / If I get a residency, I will have to move my family to another state.  Completing a residency includes a research project – which is scary.  Most prominently, this insane, constant, overwhelming stress about my grades will continue. Lastly, there is not guarantee that you will even get the residency if you apply for it. 

This decision seems so far away, yet so close and for someone like me who prefers to have all her ends ticked and tied it is hard not knowing what my plans are.