I was talking to my veterinarian friend about careers and she said something interesting. She and many of her vet school friends would often fantasize about becoming seriously ill or getting into bad car accidents.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because then we’d have an acceptable reason to be able to take a few days off.”
Apparently some of her medical doctor friends felt the same way.
Let’s run a totally unscientific PoA career study of your average doctor:
- High School: 4 years of working really hard at advanced placement sciences and math instead of making out under the bleachers.
- College: 4 years of working really hard and doing whatever extra curriculars pre-med types do.
- Med School: 4 years of working really really hard and probably developing a speed problem like that guy in Gross Anatomy.
- A year of residency @ 80 hours a week and ungodly stress plus many hours of extra training and continuing education in your specialty.
- At this point you’ve spent about $300,000 and your youth on your education and you’re making way less than an hourly minimum wage.
- Then, after some magical day you’re making $130,000 to $400,000 a year depending on your specialty, but you can’t take much vacation, you have to carry a pager, and your practice is beholden to a location and client base.
There are easier ways to make money than sacrificing your youth for a career you won’t even know you’ll like until it’s too late to turn back.
3 Comments ↓
But think of what a colossal prick you can be when you’re a doctor!
yeah, unless you’re actually into it for the love of helping people, it doesn’t seem like a good way to bring in the duckets huh.
i’d like to see a survey on how many doctors are actually doing it for the love of medicine vs. the love of mercedes.
Anh, I’m sure sometimes the love of Mercedes comes first and sometimes it’s a byproduct of the becoming a highly paid professional. When you’ve sunk your life into something you don’t love but you can’t really escape you end with all these trappings (fancy cars, houses, Philippe Patek watches) that only help perpetuate the cycle. It’s pretty much addict behavior and you end up hanging out with people that have the same addictions.