To give up a £100k job to retrain as a vet?

£100K at 28 is way above average. I’d look to keep going and invest wisely and you could be financially set up in a decade or so. Then you can decide exactly what you want to do without the usual financial stress of mortgages etc.

Being a vet sounds great but it’s a huge amount of incredibly unglamorous hard work for not a huge reward.

Vets I know are massively underpaid for what they do, they have to deal with idiot members of the public (anti vaxers, people who put cosmetic stuff ahead of their animals health, people who shout at them that they're horrible and heartless for not giving free treatment like the nhs) and the hours are unsociable - people want to see the vet for non emergencies after work so standard hours for vets around here seem to be til 7pm which means that all nursery and school pick ups fall to their partners. They are also on minimum holiday allowance and don't get paid for sick days etc (so again all kids sick days fall on their partners).

Six years of uni to become a slave to your private equity paymasters. No thanks. I knew quite a few vets at uni and very few are vets now.

On 100k save madly for 3 years while doing the volunteering so you can fund your career change

My colleague's daughter has just graduated as a vet and is struggling to find a job. I would research employment statistics before taking the plunge.

I think most of us reach a point in our careers where we're wistful about other potential paths we could have travelled. You're in a privelidged spot to have the finances to actually do something about it - but will that actually lead to fulfilment?

Career isn't the be all and end all. You're making serious money; what doors could that open for you? Do you need to work full-time? When you have a family, what do you see your life looking like? I was incredibly ambitious before DC, after IDGAF. And it doesn't have to be DC; could you travel / invest in property?

I don’t think the suicide rate is that higher. It’s way higher in the medical profession and police officers (I used to work for the police and was horrified by the suicide lists)

most vets I know enjoy their jobs so I’d say go for it. I’d love to be a vet.

I think it's easy to imagine that a drastic career change is the answer to boredom - but what if you do all that retraining and in 10 years time you're bored again?

You need to find out what being a vet is really like - speak to people and maybe get some experience shadowing vets.

Then you need to work out if you can afford to take 7 years out of work and pay all your fees. Plus you want to have kids in that timeframe - how will you afford a couple of year of unpaid maternity leave and how will you fund nursery when you go back to studying?

Maybe the answer is to work part time or to get a job with a more interesting company - or to go self employed? It's a big deal to give up what you already have.

Friend is a vet

Has always said most stressful part was dealing with humans

Plus if you stop being a FT vet, you have to do so many days per year vet work to keep ypur qualifications active

Plus on call working hours

You're on £100k at age 28?! Wowzers trousers. With As at A levels, did you go to uni? So maybe only been in work 7 years? That's crazy income for that age. (As a 43 year old who was recently chuffed with a recent pay rise finally taking me over the £30k mark).

Look, we have one life so live it. If your north star is being a vet, make it happen. If it sucks, you can change again. A very expensive way to be a real life Mr Ben but it happens, I know adults in their 70s who had huge career changes which involved retraining.

I'd hate to be a vet!

Can you stick with what you're doing for say a couple of years, live fairly frugally and save like hell while you've got the chance?

28 is still so very very young.

I am sad for you that your mum influenced your A level choices to an extent that it limited your options with pursuing a career in an area you were passionate about. That sucks. My parents supported us to choose subjects we loved and we've all ended up in careers linking to those. My son's doing A levels in subjects I never would've chosen because they're what HE likes and link up with a higher education route to a career with good prospects and of interest to HIM not me!

It's definitely not too late to make a change. In teaching, some of the best teachers and most influential educators have been those who switched over from other pathways, bringing other expertise and experience but also really enjoying the journey and being grateful for the opportunity.

I think you're wise to look at volunteering opportunities in animal focused organisations to get some hands on experience and perspectives before you make any big decisions. It could be that there are other areas of learning and employment around animals and conservation that draw you in more than vet studies.

Good luck either way!

I looked into this myself- not worth it financially unless you go into equine. Do an animal based hobby/volunteer at vet hospitals or rescues instead.

I’m all for ‘do what you love’, but don’t make any decisions hastily. What exactly is it you like about being a vet? Since you make good money in your current job, can you go part-time and spend the rest of your time doing something with animals? You could get the best of both worlds, keep your well paid job and still have plenty of time to do what fulfils you without the downsides of being a vet.

As a child I thought I wanted to be a vet. As an adult I think it is a horrible life, constantly witnessing animal cruelty and suffering. I'm not surprised the suicide rate is so high. However, it is an important job and if you love animals and still want to do this, more power to your elbow.

Ironically, I would have no qualms about becoming a doctor. I dislike humans.

My dad was a vet, retired a few years ago. He wasn’t very present in my upbringing with late nights and weekends etc. so it may be not that compatible with family life depending on what sort of vet you are/contract you have. Sometimes he’d be sitting down for family dinner and his bleep would go off and he’d have to go on out and not have dinner with us. He’s work Christmas Day, Easter Sunday etc. I’m academic but chose a 9-5 job instead as not having my dad around growing up made me reflect on what I wanted from my own family life.

Vets also I think have the highest suicide rate of all the professions (I think!) it’s a stressful job and a lot of pressure.

Not necessarily, she could speak to various universities about entry pathways. She has good professional experience and they do take that into account. There are foundation courses and pre-masters diplomas that provide an entryway into masters degrees.

In any case I'm not imagining that she'd go into hands-on work with animals as that is very very competitive. But there are business-related functions like finance, strategy, environmental consulting, even wildlife tech that could be a good fit with her consulting background.

I’m not a vet, but like you, wanted to be one as a teenager.

Can I ask what is your main motivation to be a vet? It sounds like some of it might be to prove a point that you’re academically capable.

If that is your main reason, I’d gently suggest that you shouldn’t consider it.

You are clearly very academically capable, based on your A levels and your current role. And at the risk of going off on a tangent, I wonder if some therapy might be helpful to work through those feelings around being academic enough 🌺

but those careers are really difficult to get into, and you'd still have to do A levels/foundation, then a 3 year degree, then a Masters.

I did this (give up a massive salary and retrain). With small kids.

It was totally worth it - retraining was so interesting and has made me a new and better person. I love my new career - but as I had large savings from the massive salary days, I don't need to work FT, which makes it even better.

Do it. You live once and the most interesting lives include risks.

You could do it, but why, animals can't tell you what is wrong. You have to tell pwners to put them to sleep, I have a few friends who become vetsand they have all quit, now two are farming, and one is a teacher and much happier.

It's really hard to get onto vet uni courses, there aren't loads and they're very oversubscribed, I would do some serious homework on that first

Don't do it!
Hard work to get qualified, poorly paid, long hours.
Clients are getting more and more difficult because they've read something on google and think they know better than you.
You'll probably land working for a large chain who only cares are profit and squeezing as much out of you as they can.

Be warned that it is very competitive currently to get onto a degree course to become a vet…you’ll be competing against top A-level students with stellar academic predictions plus heaps of work experience who themselves are finding it extraordinarily competitive.

You are mad ... keep earning 100K ... eventually do less hours and volunteer with animal charities in your spare time. Lots of being a vet is running a business, doing paperwork, so you will spend a lot of time at a desk. Small animal vets are now pretty much all part of chains lots of KPIs and papework plus upselling. Large animal ones work insane hours and yes the suicide rate speaks for itself.

I can't speak for you but personally I wouldn't become a vet at your age; you'd have to start from scratch again right from A Levels.

You can always move into a more interesting area of consulting or business and have an animal hobby on the side. Train guide dogs or start horse riding.

If you really wanted to switch into an animal-related career, I'd be thinking of a masters in something like wildlife conservation, animal behaviour, or marine biology.

Vet suicide is huge.
Years of training for a poor income.
private equity bleeding the industry dry.

You’d have to be utterly mad.