Difference in B Teaching/ B Education (1 Viewer)

[Mambomeg]

I wouldn't consider vaccinating animals all the time being a vet, what about all the surgery stuff? don't most vets get into that? It's like saying it's easy to be a pharmacist because all you do is give people stuff off the shelf or fill prescriptions out of the box. Surely you do higher end stuff if you so choose, or say you specialise in farm animals and end up working for a large pastoral company and travel the countryside checking stock.



yeah, too bad i've only had 2 weeks of holidays over every Christmas over the last 3 years. The rest I have spent teaching High School kids during their holidays and doing commercial training and development work on behalf of TAFE. That's without all the assignment marking and lesson prep that also goes on.



Oh I don't know I seem to be doing ok with several different jobs none of which interfere with each other but complement nicely. I wonder how easy it is for a vet to change to something else though? Do you specialise in certain animals and when you've had enough you switch to another type or do you get out of it altogether? I don't know much about Vets as you might notice

if you graduate with a vet degree, you should be able to perform all the skills, like surgery etc. Like i said, you can specialise, but it usually involves overseas study, and a lot of money, and, like i said, crazy working hours. Its just like any pharmacist that graduates should be able to hand out drugs.

Once you can do that, without supervision, what more can you do? go and seek out animals with strange diseases and then diagnose them? it wont get you any more money.

If myself and one of my colleagues can both vaccinate, desex, do radiographs etc, then the only difference is personality, but once we have both reached the maximum pay level, personality wont make any difference at all. If a vet clinic cant afford to pay you more, you wont get paid any more, no matter how good you are, because if you leave, they will get some other vet in to replace you, who has the same skills.

When i said careers, i meant lifelong sort of things, not jobs, i have 2 jobs which arent related to my degree, which is my career choice. I mean i cant easily switch between being a vet and an engineer, or a nurse and an architect.

Vets can get hired in any field really, there's some working as vets, some for the Dept of primary industries (or whatever it is calling itself this week), some in random areas like journalism, consultancy, some in medical research, etc etc etc. Its one of those degrees where graduates get respect anywhere because most people know how hard it is to get through the degree. Most graduates have a good wortk ethic, determination, a knowlege of medical terminology, common sense, dont mind getting dirty and have the ability to pick things up quickly, so they tell us we are suited to pretty much anything.

But something like only 10% of vets are still working as vets 10 years out of uni, for exactly the reason we have been discussing, poor pay, and no-where to climb to.

Its a common misconeption that our lecturers are constantly telling us we have to dispel that vets get paid lots. I even had an argument / discussion with my mum las night and she whinged about having to pay a $45 consult fee at the vet. shes a doctor! she earns $50 an hour, i will earn $17 an hour! which is less than i get paid now in my casual job! but people dont believe you, even if you have figures to back your argument up.

edit: and anther point, less than 10% of total vet income comes from farming, its 75% from companion animals, cats, dogs and birds.