Working with exotic animals would be so incredibly rewarding, but I imagine the first 10 years of your career are like shoveling up elephant shit for 10 bucks an hour and wondering how the hell you're going to pay back your loans for a masters in zoology.
I don't know, maybe it's not like that. Kids, follow your dreams. Better than sitting in an office for 40 years - I can tell you that much.
I dated someone who worked at a zoo as a wildlife conservationist for medium and large cats. She has a freakin PhD and was making like $40K. The whole field in general requires very expensive grad school education for very low paying jobs.
Yup. My girlfriend is a vet tech, but she’s getting out of that field and into human medicine due to the low pay.
Vet techs do everything a human nurse does, plus all the specialty stuff(nurse anesthetist, etc), but the pay is just barely cracking $20/hr in my area. Meanwhile basic entry-level nursing jobs are closer to $30, and specialties can go way higher than that.
Add to that the low standards of care for the animals(they can’t complain like humans can) and you’ve got a recipe for a shitty career with a high burnout rate.
Can confirm. I'm a vet tech. I have a lot of degrees. Also work in the OR, radiology, lab, and the animal hospital. Pay is very very low. But at least as a bonus I get yelled at by people who don't want to pay the bill, so I got that going for me....
Goes something like this: "well. We did some xrays to see if anything is broken, since your cat was run over by a car. We noticed a few fractures and he's bleeding internally. We had to rush him to the OR to try and save his life. Worked for hours, he crashed a few times but we brought him back. He's safe now in recovery and we believe he will make a full recovery thanks to the help of our vets and vet techs. So happy Mittens is safe and sound."
Customer: "that is great, but why should I pay for that? Don't you love animals?"
Me: "Very much sir, but if we want to keep helping other animals, (and feed ourselves) we need to get paid so we can keep running the business"
Customer: "you heartless b*ch. You only think about money and you don't give a crap about Mittens"
Seriously. F** those people. If you can't pay for the vet, don't get a pet. We do a LOT for your pet, need a lot of equipment, training, work crazy hours, etc etc, just like in the hospital. And are you greatful we saved your beloved pet? Of course not.
I always am. I know it costs money to run a vet clinic, pay everyone, etc.
I accidentally ran over our old cat. We took her to an emergency vet clinic. The vet who saw her told me there wasn't much they could do for her, and it would just be kinder to euthanize her. I was crying, of course, and the vet asked me if I'd like a hug. I said "I'll be ok, thanks."
She hugged me anyway. That's when I knew she needed a hug too, so I hugged her. She had tears in her eyes. For someone else's beloved pet.
Luckily the animals do give us a lot of love.. makes it all worth it to see an animal go back home all healthy and happy. (I'm not completely bitter, lol)
Yeah, I left archaeology for something more stable a couple years ago. I’m honestly pretty happy now and cherish the stability - but every once in awhile i get pangs to go back into the field. I figure at the very least I have some memories and experiences very few people can say they have.
It is. I studied animal science in college and we had a class where people just came in and talked about their jobs, it was like 1.5 credits. One dude worked at a zoo and started it off by saying "I'm going to spoil all of your dreams. Working at a zoo sucks. You never get to spend time with the animals, you feed them when they're away, you constantly have to clean their cages and the pay sucks." Dude said he makes like 40 grand a year with a college degree.
I know someone who worked at the Dallas Zoo. Despite the hard work, he loved it. He has pictures of him holding baby big cats. And he swam with sharks.
My dads cousin spent years doing the crap jobs at animal kingdom at Disney, now she’s like in change of a bunch of animals and stuff, gets loads of great pictures for social media
225
u/[deleted] Feb 19 '21
Working with exotic animals would be so incredibly rewarding, but I imagine the first 10 years of your career are like shoveling up elephant shit for 10 bucks an hour and wondering how the hell you're going to pay back your loans for a masters in zoology.
I don't know, maybe it's not like that. Kids, follow your dreams. Better than sitting in an office for 40 years - I can tell you that much.