I dunno. I sense a great attitude and a literate way of describing your outlook on life. I think you'll do fine wherever you go...if you love critical care-types of things, take every chance you get a a student to peek in to the ICU or NICU (less heavy lifting, more like cats than Great Danes), meet the staffs, take your senior practicum in a critical care unit and excel at it.
For most new grads we recommend that they take whatever job they can get, because it's hard to find jobs. It is really not too soon to start cultivating relationships, though. Work a day a week as a CNA and volunteer to help in the ICUs. Get known. Soak up everything you can.
Looking forward to seeing you go through school! Good luck!
(Here's my experience with vet ICU from an old thread about whether it's appropriate to call them "vet nurses." ... bless you guys...
Our Naja kitty squatted and gave me a bloody sample on the floor, and having seen this before I took her to our vet and reported she had a UTI. He stuck her for a urine sample and gave her an antibiotic. Next day he called to say the urine C&S came back clean, and we shrugged and went back to life. Alas, Naja almost went on to die, as she had a rare side effect to this very common antibiotic and almost infarcted her bowel. After a stat CAT scan (really) she had emergent surgery that night by a guy that reminded me of a pedi surgeon-- great huge guy with immense hands and a heart of gold. "Oh, I love calicos!" he said. "I'll take good care of her." But he didn't know if she'd live.
We went to visit her in the ICU the next afternoon. She had a staple line from her pubis to xiphoid, drains, and a little kitty PICC line in a shaved foreleg for blood draws, IVs and pain meds so she didn't have to get stuck all the time. She was wrapped in a pedi-sized BAIR hugger and in an oxygen cage. Do not ask what all this cost us.
And those nurses were great-- I watched them check her SpO2, take vs, give her IV pain med before moving her, turn her from side to side, check her urine specific gravity, and pet her and croon to her all the time. I don't know what they had to learn in school, but whatever it was, they knew exactly what they were doing and looked like they'd be perfectly at home in any PICU I've ever seen. So yes, in the vet context, they're nurses.
I bless that surgeon but I also bless the nurses, and told them so, nurse to nurse, how much I appreciated their skills. I was able to talk shop so well with them that they assessed me as being able to manage home care a day sooner than usual for this sort of thing; I took her home with the big collar, a few meds, a schedule to give them, a med sheet to chart them, and dressing supplies. She was in step-down (confined to our bedroom) for three weeks. I took out her staples at 8 days; I saw she wasn't paying any attention at all to her staple line if I let her have the collar off to eat, so after a few trials of observation I let her keep it off. Good patient, adherent to treatment plan.
She's fine now, two years later, catching rabbits and cuddling with us whenever she wants, very communicative and a pushy cat. We're glad to have her. )
