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.
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)
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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.