So You Want to be a Veterinary Technician?

by Kelly Lemke, CVT

Kelly Lemke, CVT

It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to "be" when I grew up.  I was never one of those kids who knew what they wanted to do by the time they were 10 years old.  After I graduated from high school, I went to UW-Milwaukee for a few years taking pre-vet classes with the plan of going on to veterinary school.  Then life got in the way.  I got married, bought a house, and realized that I didn't want to be in school for 4-5 more years, or spend a few hundred thousand dollars more on my education.  The only thing I still knew was that I still wanted to work in veterinary medicine.  Becoming a veterinary technician was the perfect option, and looking back, I'm so happy I never made it to veterinary school. 

To become a veterinary technician, a person must graduate from an AVMA accredited school and pass the Veterinary Technician National Exam.  Thirteen years ago when I started school, the only AVMA accredited school in Wisconsin was Madison Area Technical College.  The Veterinary Technician program is two years, plus a summer internship.  I spent hours taking notes in lectures (with an actual pen and notebook), staring into microscopes in clinical pathology labs, prepping and monitoring surgery patients in surgical nursing classes, and learning how to examine, draw blood, and give injections to mice, cows, goats, horses, dogs, and cats.  I carried on average 16 credits a semester, which cost me roughly $2000/semester.  On top of that, I had to buy books, a stethoscope, scrubs, coveralls, and boots to wear in the barn.  These additional supplies were about $500 a semester.  The summer internship was considered “summer school” so I had to pay to do that as well.  I spent 320 hours working here in a small animal hospital and at Jefferson Veterinary Clinic working with large animals.  I was fortunate to be paid minimum wage during my internship, but many of my classmates were not paid at all, which isn’t unusual for an internship.  All told, my education cost me around $11000, plus the money I spent on gas driving to Madison five days a week for two years.  In 2011, the average starting salary for a Certified Veterinary Technician was $20000-$23000, which in the “real world” isn’t a lot of money.  In fact, low salary was the number-one cited reason for veterinary technicians leaving the field in a 2007 survey by the National Association of Veterinary Technicians.

Veterinary Technicians don’t spend as much on their educations as veterinarians do and oftentimes don’t have huge amounts of debt coming out of school.  Yes, we don’t earn a lot of money, but there are other rewards.  If a person is unable to afford veterinary school, becoming a veterinary technician is an affordable option.  If you are trying to decide what you want to “be” when you grow up, give us a call and arrange a day to job-shadow a technician.  We’d be happy to show you what we do!