3 College Students on How Fostering Pets Helped Them Get Through School
Plus, tips on how to make it work with term papers, exams, and a busy social life.
Dorm-room ramen, loft beds, three-hour written exams, and late nights out — these things are all part of how we imagine the quintessential college student experience. But while many university attendees are missing their family pets at home, a few have discovered a creative solution: fostering pets. While taking on the responsibility for another living creature may be the last thing on many students’ minds, others find the experience to be a rewarding and fulfilling part of their college years.
In fact, a 2021 study opens in new tab even found that the presence of cats on college campuses can greatly increase happiness levels among students. In fact, Stephens College, a private women’s college in Columbia, Missouri, is so aware of this that they offer a scholarship program opens in new tab through local rescue Columbia Second Chanceopens in new tab, so students can foster pets in their dorm roomsopens in new tab.
Students who get selected for the program go through a selection process, and if they are chosen, they get a scholarship to help care for the pets, as well as supplies provided by Second Chance. Even if students aren’t part of the program, Second Chance supports its college-student foster volunteers with the resources they need to take care of rescue animals. A rescue in a town with more than 36,000 opens in new tab college students, Second Chance is a great example of how organizations can utilize students — who have the energy and passion — to fulfill their foster needs.
But fostering in college can’t be easy, as anyone who’s ever had term-paper deadlines and group projects might imagine. Between daunting class schedules, tight budgets, and balancing time with friends, a few college fosters at Second Chance shared their experience with us.
What does it take to foster pets in college?
Torre Taylor grew up around animals, but didn’t bring a pet to college with her. During her second year of undergraduate studies, she had some extra time and decided to help out the local shelter by volunteering to walk dogs. She did this a few times, but she didn’t find out about the opportunity to foster dogs at Second Chance until graduate school, at which point she applied and brought home her first foster dog.
During her two-year tenure as a student foster, Taylor says “the biggest challenge was making time for vet appointments, meet-and-greets, and other events.” She remembers having to take off work early on occasion to make sure her fosters were taken care of — whether that meant picking them up from spay/neuter surgery, dropping them off at an adoption event, or taking them to meet a potential adopter. Luckily, she was able to ask roommates and friends for help when needed and coordinate with other volunteers when she wasn’t able to work around her other obligations.
Taylor also emphasizes the fact that fostering (and all the necessary supplies that accompany the task) is free, meaning that students on a budget can typically still make it work financially. This is a big deal to college students; pet-parenthood expenses can add up fast. While Taylor did pay for gas to drive to many adoption events, these were optional and when times were tight, she could keep her foster at home and find other ways to expose her to the public.
There are ways to get around the barriers to fostering.
A volunteer for Second Chance starting at age 10, Ellie Nixon started off earning credit for a school project but soon found herself begging her mom to let her continue her work with the rescue. She started fostering at just 17 years old, and has since then, she’s fostered 30 cats (one of whom she adopted, or as we say in the rescue world “foster failed”).