This is what I have been telling myself every day, no, every hour since I made the decision to leave veterinary medicine and pursue a career in writing/English. The end goal is still being worked out, but the initial feeling I had, was that of failure.
Veterinary assistants, technicians, and even veterinarians leaving the field for one reason or another is not anything new. Amy Newfield, CVT, VTS (ECC), wrote in their article titled, “How to Survive as a Veterinary Technician”, that the veterinary technicians who change careers do so after five to ten years in the field. I am currently in my eighth year since starting at my first kennel attendant job and veterinary assistant schooling in 2016. After that much time, energy, and heartache spent working job, we need to talk about the beginning before we get to the end.
I had made the choice to go into veterinary medicine when I was a small child, like most of us did. Starting with volunteering at an animal shelter and an equine rescue for the first few years was an amazing way to see how things were done. At Sno-Isle Tech Skill Center in high school, I learned the distinction between the various roles in a veterinary hospital, and the animal care career path as a whole, and discovered that technician was the sweet spot-position I wanted.
Spending my senior year at Sno-Isle learning the ins and outs of large and small animal medicine and where you can go in the career really lit a fire under my ass that has burned since. I graduated with a certificate of veterinary assisting with high marks. That was in 2014 and in 2016 I attended Pima Medical Institute for (again) veterinary assisting as they did not recognize my certificate from Sno-Isle, but that beside the point. While I attended Pima, I worked my first kennel attendant job which was a great entry-level position to get the feel and flow of a hospital.
Some life-altering events, a botched externship, and one debockle after another kept me from my first assisting position until 2017. This job, however, would turn out to not only be the hospital that I would gain the majority of my skills at, but also the one I have since returned to in March of 2023. As we moved around there were three other hospitals with wildly different atmospheres and medical standards, but each gave me the opportunity to become the assistant I am today. Schooling has not been so successful though.
After a disappointing time at Pima and with the knowledge of at least two upcoming moves in next two years, I decided to enroll at Penn Foster in 2018. While online, self-paced school may work for some, it definitely is not the schooling type for me. Since 2018, I am currently only 40% of the way through a typical two-year degree. Yes, this sure does sound like a big fat failure, but I knew that even though a physical school is what works best for me and having to work full time, this was my only shot toward an Associated in Veterinary Medicine and another step closer to being licensed. However, I did my best, so no, I did not fully fail.
Despite all of the schooling and moving hurtles, I feel like I can safely say that I am damn good at my job. Animal care has brought be the biggest feeling of satisfaction and pride in my life and there is nothing that will ever change that. Even if that feeling will one day be a memory. With that said though, this field has becoming increasingly toxic in the recent years. Yes, COVID has a lot to do with it, but there are factors and situations that never were or are no longer affected by the pandemic.
Working at different types of hospitals in different areas of the country, has shown me that it is not just one toxic hospital, but in fact a seemingly detrimental fixture everywhere. It goes without saying that this is obviously a statement based out of my own personal experiences and there are good hospitals out there, I just have not seen them. Now what are these issues? What is the main reason I no longer want to work in vet med? The pandemic did play a major role in the deterioration of client-staff, staff-staff, management-staff, and even owner-pet relationships, but this bitch was toxic when I started.
When the pandemic hit, we had just moved to Florida (Spring of 2020). It had seemed like we had left Virginia (which was a hell unto its own) and arrived in a burning world surrounded by a mass of people who did not take this issue seriously. This post is not about the pandemic or my views of it, but the regulations put in place and the term “essential worker” will be include for context in the demise of my passion.
Now, both clinics I worked at in Florida were privately owned which was a nice change from only having corporate-owned hospital experience. Costs were much lower and thus our clients could afford more basic care and even more intensive care for their pets. Yes, the south is cheaper than the PNW, but privately-owned hospitals do have more leeway when it comes to their prices and what services we could do for free even. This clinic was more “red” than I knew when I started and thus my coworker’s daily annoyance, frustrations, and fact-twisting exclamations in regard to the pandemic and the government’s response really lowered moral and created tension for everyone. We were walk-in only and saw pretty much anything under the sun besides large animals. Being in a more low-income location, we saw all kinds of shit that would make most people want to quit every day too. Google even accidentally listed us as an emergency facility TWICE when we definitely were not. With that said, I learned a few “tricks” that I still use to this day. Most of the medicine there was fast and dirty, more of “a bandage on a bullet hole” kind of place, but we were able to help a large volume of animals and owners who would not be able to get care anywhere else. As nice as that is, the sheer abuse and neglect we also saw in this setting is what rips my heart apart.
At the height of pandemic, management doing only what they are legally required in way of mandates and safety protocols, being termed an “essential worker” legally, but not recognized by fucking anyone else, the brutally high adoption rate by people staying home leading to even more patients, and the daily harassment by some of the community that our “wait times are too long”, I was close to breaking. I soon quit that hospital to work at another private clinic that took more initiative in the standard of patient care and that of their staff. This hospital held a lot of internal drama, but otherwise we were still able to provide care to the community while being respected as a human (most of the time).
I could go in depth about how “COVID-Puppies” will probably be a technical behavioral disorder term soon, or how I have had clients threaten to shoot us because he didn’t want to wait four hours for vaccines as if we were the only clinic in existence. I could elaborate on how I have had co-workers scream in my face over the smallest thing, displacing their aggression about their job on each other. I could tell you about how I had a client pull a knife on me because we could not save his dog that he accidentally backed over with his car five days ago. I could talk about my own panic attacks and fists through walls from the deliberate neglect from owners toward their pets as we euthanized them. I could, but this is me moving on from that.
Having recently moved back to my “home hospital” in Washington, I knew it would not be the same as before, which is good in some aspects, but the leash seems to have been let off a little too loose. In an effort to not “talk shit”, I will only state that the final straw of bullshit has come. I cannot physically or mentally stay in this job for much longer. Amy Newfield’s article has the word “Survive” in it for a reason.
After long talks with the husband about what else I could do with my life on this planet – a thought I have never considered until the last year and a half— he mentioned my love of reading and writing. As those have always had a strong place in my life, I never thought about it as a career. I always thought “well authors do not need a degree to write, and I absolutely have no desire to be an English teacher”, but after some research I discovered that an English degree, while broad and boring to some, is one of the most beneficial degrees to have as it is so broad and communication experts are becoming an ever-increasing demand. Realizing how right he is, as he normally is, I said fuck it, let’s do it. A few hours on the computer and an application later I am now a student at Olympic College and starting this April, I will enroll in my first “real” college course. I will still be working at the hospital part-time, but I am beyond ecstatic to start this new chapter.
So, taking the account I have given above, why is it that I am trying so desperately to feel like I have not failed at this career? Great question. I think the majority of it is my difficultly with not finishing things with a touch of perfectionism. If I do not complete a task, no matter its size, to the fullest, I have failed. That is how I was taught growing up and what has stuck in my little OCD brain since. Anything that I do not finish and/or not finish it beyond the expectations is unacceptable in my eyes. However, I am learning that that is not true. I look back on all of the animals I have helped, and I can say with every ounce of my heart, that I did not fail them. I did not let them down. No matter how absolutely fucked the day way, their care was always my top priority and always will be till my very last day walking through hospital doors as an employee. There is nothing more rewarding to me than easing the pain of an animal. Knowing that their existence is only improved by whatever service it is we are providing. Whether their pain truly does end there that day via euthanasia, or we get the ones who can, back on the road to recovery. Nothing beats that feeling of knowing I helped.
I know the next four years will still continue to be a wild roller coaster towards graduation, and that work will still be a love-hate for me, I know all of it will be worth in. I will get back into volunteering after I leave vet med but being able to acknowledge the good I have done thus far, is helping to warm my heart again. One of my favorite quotes is “Saving the life of one animal will not change the world, but it will change the world for that one animal.” Not sure who said it, but damn does it feel good knowing that I have spent the last eight-ish years of my life changing the world for these amazing creatures. So no, I did not fail. I did not fail. I did not fail.
Reference
Write. Read. Repeat. 
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