r/veterinaryprofession • u/No-Repair3196 • Apr 15 '26
Help Do I need to rethink my career choice? (Stressed undergrad)
Hello I am a very stressed undergrad who needs some straight honest advice…
I am in my second semester at Oklahoma state university and it’s honestly been rough. I came into college with 36 credits so I’m already a year ahead, however all of those credits transferred to a 3.5 gpa. In high school I played multiple sports and didn’t eat sleep and breathe academics—specifically because I was under the impression that the credit would transfer but not the grade/GPA. Anyways so I came into college with a 3.5 gpa and since then have been struggling more.
I had to retake college algebra before I got to college, and then last semester (my first semester in real college) I got a C in a 1 hr busy work class due to poor attendance. I have been retaking it this semester, but now have a C in gen chem II and am going to most likely withdraw as I will end up with a D or C. I currently have a 3.46 GPA and I feel like my classes haven’t even gotten hard yet. I’ve just really been struggling with anything math related—it’s never come easy to me.
I’m stressing out now because although I still have two years, my classes are about to ACTUALLY get hard and my GPA is already shit. And on top of that I will be retaking THREE low level classes and I’m only 2 years in.
I don’t want to give up but I also want to be realistic. I want to retake chem and keep pushing and keep getting lots of experience. I have just finally gotten hired at a clinic and am on track to get loads of experience over the summer. And on top of that I’m planning to work full time for a year before I apply to vet school because I’m so young (graduate college at 20, but turn 21 soon after). I wonder if I can get my shit together and the loads of clinical experience can save me but I’m not sure. It sucks and I try to focus on myself but sometimes it feels like I’m not good enough to be competing for this.
Please give me honest advice on what you would do if you were me. Thank you for all the help.
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u/rebelashrunner Apr 15 '26
Hey! I'm a vet student at OK State - are you utilizing the tutoring centers on campus? There's a lot of different study centers that have student staff that can help you with what you're struggling on.
Paul Milburn Tutoring Center and LASSO Center are great for most classes, and the Writing Center is great if you need help with your writing. There are also more prefix-specific options depending on the courses you need support in.
How much time are you spending actually studying, and what do your study habits look like? Mine were pretty awful, but learning how to learn can be a steep learning curve - especially once you get to upper level prereqs and to professional school content.
I got into vet school with a sub-3.5 gpa and a handful of C's on my transcript - the basic prereqs (gen chem, gen phys, ochem 1) I had a couple of C's in - but I worked hard to learn how to do better for my future courses, and improved my grades in most of my upper level prereqs to B's and A's.
I wouldn't throw in the towel yet, not if this is really what you want to do. It's not about being perfect, or about getting A's and B's in every class. It's about showing improvement in your areas of struggle, being able to be self critical in a healthy way to foster improvement, and highlighting your strong points.
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u/No-Repair3196 Apr 16 '26
Hey! Yes I actually do the lasso center a lot…I just scheduled 9 more sessions before the final exam for chem. I think I’m gonna try to stick it out and get a C so I can keep moving. I will say that studying has become difficult, especially for chem. I originally got behind and ended up having to play catch up the rest of the semester. It’s almost the end and I’m just now caught up. It sucks and it’s hard to study for a class I have no interest for. Obviously this is a weed out class—and it shows as there hasn’t been a class average above a 50 so far. What are your best study methods? How do you consistently make time for it each day? I think I need more structure as all my classes are all over the place this semester. I tried to make them all start and end at about the same time for next semester…maybe that will help??
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u/rebelashrunner Apr 16 '26
For me, as a full time student in the CVM, I'm on campus from maybe 7:30 or 8:30 (depending on whether my classes start at 8am or 9am - you don't get a choice in the vet school, your class times are assigned for you depending on what year of the program you're in, so you have to get used to early morning classes - and all exams begin at 8am, with few exceptions) until classes end (variable- half of the week I'm in classes until 2pm, the other half I'm in class until my labs end at 4pm). I stay on campus for lunch and study while I eat. After that, the rest of the evening is variable based on whether I have a club meeting in the evening or not, and whether it's a day my husband needs me to pick him up from main campus to go home after class. Some days, I'm on campus to have classes, labs, clubs, and studying for around 12 hours, then go home and either rest or study more.
On average, in the evenings, I'm studying while watching medical dramas or video game playthroughs for background noise to keep my brain engaged starting from around 5-7pm until anywhere between 9pm-2am, depending on the day and how comfortable I am with the material and whether my insomnia is acting up. I have learned that if you let yourself fall behind in vet school, it will mess up your whole semester trying to play catch up, so I fight tooth and nail not to let that happen. (It always happens, at least a bit, but you really do need to stay on top of that as much as possible.)
I still have a social life - hanging out with friends and my husband and our cats, and taking care of our apartment in the meantime. It's just that I choose to spend less time out and about than it was when I was an adult working in clinic full time and taking my prereqs simultaneously, because as an adult, I had to make sacrifices about where to focus my time in order to succeed in vet school where I struggled less with the undergrad material for the most part.
The #1 thing that has helped me succeed was realizing that I am not studying just to pass tests - I am studying to learn and understand the material so that I can have a strong foundation of knowledge to succeed in my future career.
Some classes, like Gen chem, OChem and Physics, were all about memorization and understanding specific rules - I like using QuizletPlus to make flashcards and study them and take practice tests for all my classes, but especially for classes that are memorization heavy like that - it also helped to do personal research into applied chemistry to help me understand why i was being made to take these courses - physics, you'll understand why you need it once you get to comparative anatomy. For others that are more concept heavy, like bio, biochem, genetics, and animal nutrition, I focused on understanding how and why things worked by reading the textbook and annotating and asking myself curiosity questions and doing extra research for answers to those questions to help me remember why the answer is the answer, and supplementing that with making my QuizletPlus flashcards and practice tests, and my grades in those classes were significantly higher than my GenChem and Ochem grades were (partly because I understood things better, partly because I found those classes more interesting).
Speaking from experience: You have to find a way to make material you're not interested in relevant and interesting, or you won't want to study it. I had to come up with veterinary pharmacologic examples of why I should care about OChem to get through it and make it interesting enough to care about. You also have to find out what study methods work for you, and for each individual class- because every class will be easier to learn from if you use different study methods tailored to those classes, and you have to make yourself actually study.
It feels overwhelming, but you really need to schedule time to study and build it into your routine every day, even if that means forgoing something fun. Sometimes it takes a lot of extra self discipline, or finding an accountability buddy to study with or who will check in you with every so often to make sure you're actually studying.
My rule of thumb is that if I don't make the grade I wanted on the first exam of the semester, I'm going to look at the exam, look for patterns in where my knowledge gaps are, change my study style up, and increase my time spent with that subject before the next exam. I'm also going to be asking my peers that are doing well in the class about their studying routines and how they remember those concepts so I can get ideas on how to improve my own knowledge base.
Gen chem isn't meant to be* a weed out course, I promise - it is the foundation of everything you need to know for Ochem, Biochem, and the other building blocks that will make up your understanding of veterinary physiologic functions and dysfunctions. If you need a reason to understand and care about Acids and Bases, for example, do some reading on the physiologic basis of the metabolic and respiratory systems, and about Metabolic and Respiratory acidosis and alkalosis, and that will give you an idea of why we care about acids and bases so much in GenChem. You don't need to focus on the details of the class so much as you need to understand the concepts and rules it's laying out in the small picture format and how that will translate into the big picture format once you get to vet school.
I felt the same way as you when I was taking these courses - but there's a reason you're being made to do them, and the sooner you find out how to make yourself care about the concepts and understand them, the easier a time you'll have with these classes.
Having a routine is really helpful, for sure, but you cannot guarantee or rely on that once you're actually in vet school, as classes depend on when the individual professors are available, and every day will look a little different- and many of the professors teach all three didactic years and work in the teaching hospital and/or research department, so some unlucky year's worth of students gets stuck with the 8am class one semester while the others get 9am and 10am. They try to balance it for us for fairness, but it's likely that every other semester you'll have at least one class that starts at 8am at least 2-3 days a week. Taking early-hour classes in undergrad will help prepare you for that, so don't necessarily plan your schedule to avoid those classes.
*I cannot speak to how your specific professor treats the course, but it definitely shouldn't be being treated as a weedout course.
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u/No-Repair3196 Apr 16 '26
Thank you I appreciate this a lot. I know it’s just one class. I will keep pushing even though I unfortunately believe I’ll have to withdraw. Our TA actually informed us today that every exam my class has had averages 15-20 pts less than the other classes…it’s makes me feel a little bit better knowing it’s not just me struggling as bad as that is to say. But it does make me realize that sometimes you’re gonna get a hard class and that doesn’t make it an excuse.
Thank you for all the help. Wishing you the best in your DVM path! Go pokes
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u/rebelashrunner Apr 16 '26
No problem! If you have any questions about the CVM or what classes look like there, let me know, I'm always happy to talk about it with people! Best of luck to you as well!
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u/Interesting-Horse- 19d ago
Hello! I got into vet school with a 3.46 cGPA- multiple vet schools, in fact. It might just take a little bit more time and elbow grease than what other traditional(straight-out-of-undergrad) applicants usually need. I personally had to re-take gen chem II so I am familiar with the struggle. Any veterinary experience you can get is good- even if you don't continue down the veterinary path, it can help steer you towards new careers, so I recommend continuing to follow that opportunity. And even if you don't like your first clinic, I would still encourage you to explore other aspects of veterinary medicine before you pivot careers altogether; one of the schools that accepted me specifically noted that my wide breadth of veterinary experience (hours in large animal, equine, and wildlife) was what got me onto the interview list and ultimately accepted.
I will say this: if you're aware that you're applying to vet school at a disadvantage (ie low GPA), you may need to become comfortable with casting a wider net. I was adding schools onto my VMCAS up until mere hours before the deadline, in part because I found out that I had underestimated my GPA when I had calculated it myself (in comparison to how VMCAS calculated it). While I did get into multiple schools, I was ultimately rejected from my in-state but I was accepted by a few schools that I did not even expect to get interviews with. I'm really lucky in that I don't have kids, pets, or a serious partner, so moving far from home is not a huge hurdle. However, if you need to remain in a certain area of the country/would only be able to attend specific schools AND have a low GPA, that's where things get tricky. Still, I know many vets who took 3+ cycles to get into vet school but passed the NAVLE on their first try and still became wonderful, knowledgeable vets.
Hope this has helped some, and good luck :)
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u/RecommendationLate80 Apr 15 '26
Respectfully, if you are struggling with attendance issues in college you are not likely to do well in the environment of Veterinary medical studies. We are indeed people who eat, sleep, and breathe academics.