This summer is the big one. The summer that everyone tells me “will be the longest summer holiday of my life”. And it’s true, I’ll be finished on the 23rd of June, which is two weeks earlier than usual. Depending on whether or not you are doing latin, you may be ending way before me – lucky you! But I still have a considerable amount of free time, and this is the perfect opportunity to get a load of work experience done.
I started looking up places to book in the second half of the autumn term, and applied for the ZSL ‘zoo academy’. I got in and will be going to London zoo every Saturday in the autumn tern this year (at great expense, unfortunately). Around the new year, I started seriously sending emails to different vet practices, animal rescue centres, wildlife centres – the lot. So far, I have managed to book a week at my local vet’s, a week at Vauxhall City Farm, and three days at Axiom Veterinary Laboratory. I have sent more emails than I can count and am still waiting for replies, but I am now having to reject offers because I don’t have enough free time. I’m going on holiday with my family and have promised to keep two weeks free for that to happen and I’m going riding for a week in Kent, so that’s 3 weeks gone. I need to have two weeks in a vet practice and two weeks in other animal establishments by October in order to send an application to the RVC, according to their website (this says that it is for 2014, but the same applies for this year). So, I am still trying to book more placements to meet those requirements – let me know if anyone has any good recommendations in London!
Sophie x
on becoming a vet 