Getting Experience 3

There are a handful of items that one needs in order to apply to any vet school. The personal statement shouldn't be that hard for me to write. I think the hard part of that will be the thousand- or so-word limit (I rarely lack for words). Another is at least one letter of recommendation from a vet. That item goes hand in hand with the third one, documented experience in a vet-supervised setting. My only option for that right now is shadowing.

I need to have a minimum of 300 hours of this type of experience before I can begin my applications. Most schools don't specify the exact number of hours but there are unspoken, unwritten understandings of some minimum.

After two months, I have so far accumulated around 50 hours. The task seems daunting but I keep looking for opportunities to get more hours. For example, I will be volunteering at a mobile spay/neuter/vax clinic for feral cat colonies later this month. So, daunting, yes, but I thought, if I just keep chipping away...

Until I came across a rather unsettling bit of information from UC Davis. While this is a very fine vet school, it wasn't on my list of five that I plan to apply to for admission. Good thing, because UC Davis says the median number of hours of experience that their vet school applicants have is more than 3200. Damned overacheiving 4H'ers!

Daunting just became impossible. I simply can't compete on that basis. I can only hope that my personal background is compelling enough to make up for the difference.

It also confirms something that I have suspected, that at my current pace, I will be done with my catch-up course work months before I have accumulated enough shadow hours. Frustrating indeed.