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A tutor helps a young student write a paper

How Tutoring Prepared Me to Be a Vet Tech

You might not think there’s much of a connection between helping college students improve their writing and helping concerned pet-parents get medical care for their fur-babies. And while the basic duties - reading papers rather than putting thermometers in dog’s bottoms, cutting out sentence fragments instead of shaving for surgeries - are obviously different, the essence of the jobs requires certain methods that are more alike than kittens and book reports.

While you can learn facts particular to a job that don’t have any bearing in any other career, it makes a much more rewarding experience when you immerse yourself fully enough in a trade to develop talents that you can carry with you.

Asking Questions

You’ll never find out anything about someone’s paper or their pet without asking a few questions. When a student sits down, you can’t make assumptions about their paper and just start changing things willy nilly. You have to understand the assignment, their intent, their goal. With a client brings in an animal - whether for a sick exam or a routine check-up - you can’t sum up the animal simply by glancing at it or the reason it’s there, even if it’s something as simple as diarrhea. You have to know how long it’s been going on, if the pet is eating, how old they are, and find out if there are other symptoms.

Both students and clients often fail to recognize information that is extremely relevant to fine-tuning a paper and healing a cat. That means you have to know the right questions to ask to draw the pertinent information out of them.

Communication

One of the key points of tutoring and vet tech-ing is being able to communicate. You have to connect with students, owners, and pets to be effective in either position. It’s more than asking questions - you have to listen to what they’re saying, and let them ask their own questions in turn.

Additionally, it’s essential to know your trade well enough that you can answer those questions in a manner consistent with the person’s level of understanding. Good communication helps everyone feel more comfortable, which in turn inspires return visits - and that’s not only good for business, it’s better for the paper and the pet to have repeated opportunities for improvement.

Giving Reassurance

Everybody worries. While the concern a student has over a rough draft of an argumentative essay is (generally) less extreme than that of a potentially dying animal’s owner, that makes it no less pertinent to the circumstances.

Admittedly, the way to provide this reassurance differs greatly. With students, it’s generally helpful to point out areas where they’ve done good work, and to maintain a confident attitude. Conversely, it’s important to accept the reality of a situation as a vet tech. While it’s easy to calm down a hysterical client when you know the animal’s life isn’t threatened, it’s considerably more difficult to help them know everything will be okay when the animal is on death’s door. In any case, the clients have come to you for help - and most of the time, they just need to know that you can give them that, in whatever small way.

Encouraging Improvement

The goal of a good writing tutor should be to improve the client’s ability to write overall, not just to get a passing grade on a single paper. Likewise, pet owners often need praise and encouragement during an especially taxing time with their pet. Training a puppy can be exhausting and frustrating, just like meeting a deadline for a paper you don’t want to write.

When a student comes in and you notice they’ve overcome a particular problem they’ve been having, you tell them. You praise them. Since puppies and kittens need several sets of vaccinations when they’re small, as a vet tech, you get to watch their progress. Pet-parents are proud of their new addition, and when you recognize the dog’s good manners, it lets them know they’re doing a good job. On the other hand, when the dog has atrocious manners, giving them a few pointers can help get them back on the right track. In both cases, it reminds the client that they don’t have to go through all of it alone.

Managing Disappointment

Inevitably, no matter what sort of client you’re working with, you’re going to run into some sort of brick wall. Many professors require their students to see a tutor. When they don’t want to be there, they aren’t always especially interested in actually working on their paper. It can be frustrating to care more about someone else’s work than they do.

In the veterinary world, not everyone has the money to provide the necessary care for a pet, or see animals as being as worthy of good care as you do. Sometimes, treatment can be so expensive that the client will opt to euthanize the animal instead - whether because they truly can’t afford it, or because they just don’t think the animal is worth the money. Every tech has heard the phrase “It’s just a cat.” The half-hearted shrug that accompanies the phrase “It’s just one paper” is almost as disheartening.

Last Updated: June 20, 2017