LOL at how you viewed the South before living there. I guess it's easy for anyone to have such incongruent perceptions of a place without having lived there. For instance, before I moved to LA I imagined it would be a really progressive place--a sort of leftist utopia (though that's an oxymoron in my mind, I was eager to see what that might look like were it to exist). Of all the places I've ever lived, LA was the most bigoted and racist; you don't find that intensity of racism and bigotry many other places (I think a major reason the movie Crash is so poignant is because it is so accurate).
Moral of the story: don't write a place off because of how you perceive it to be without having spent a meaningful amount of time there. Keep an open mind since chances are you will be surprised.
I've lived in ten cities in six states (plus worked for a month or more in a few others), and I can tell you without a doubt that racism and bigotry exist everywhere: North and South, East and West, rural and urban and suburban. More educated people will just be more subtle about how they express their bigotry, that's all. As my grandpa used to say, you can put earrings on a pig, but it's still a pig. Bigotry is still bigotry, no matter how politely it's dished out.
I grew up in the South, and I would choose living in the South (for the weather, the low COL, and the down-home values) over any other region of the country. Ironically, rural Southern poverty is a great equalizer; there's a reason why mixed race relationships are so common here. Though according to Thomas Stanley (of "The Millionaire Next Door" fame), the South and Midwest have the highest percentages of millionaires (of the blue collar type in particular). He attributes that to the cheaper COL and greater frugality ethos of these regions.
I am currently a teacher getting crushed by my current student loans ($26k) and now I'm considering doing a post-bacc then medical school and probably getting in a total of 1/4 million dollars in debt. This is terrifying. All the current doctors I have spoken to went to school before the prices tripled, so we don't really know what's going to happen to our generation. I'm pretty much set to make the switch except for the financial leap. Any suggestions? How much does med school actually come out to? Is there a chance I could come out unscathed with a bunch of scholarships? I grew up very poor and was told college is the way out of poverty, but now I'm traumatized from that no longer being the reality.
As for the OP, my advice to you is to do the following:
1) Read one or two of Stanley's books if you haven't already. Understanding why some people have plenty of money while others struggle is essential if you want to avoid falling into the latter category. Since you're already drowning in debt, consider checking out Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. I'll gladly quibble with his investing advice, but his plan for getting people out of debt is sound. If you're a church-goer, you could also see if your church offers one of his Financial Peace classes. But don't even think of starting med school until you get out of the financial hole you're already in.
2) Seek out the best value for your money when it comes to med school, and minimize how much money you need to borrow. You will pay back every dollar you take out in loans twice or even thrice over. So if you have a choice, and if minimizing your loans means attending a state school instead of a fancy private school, then do it. I wound up getting lucky in that my top choice school also gave me a full ride. But if they hadn't, would I have gone elsewhere to save money? You better believe it.
3) Frugality is the key to living below your means regardless of what you decide about med school. It's both possible and common for physicians and others with six figure incomes to be living paycheck to paycheck because they can't get control over their spending. Commit now to spending much less than you earn. And while you're in school and residency, don't live like you're an attending. Heck, even once you become an attending, don't start living like one right away. If you make saving money and paying off debt a priority, if you treat getting out of debt like your life depends on it (because in a sense it does), there is no reason why you can't save half your income or more and pay off your loans in a reasonable time frame. Especially if you worked hard to keep the amount you have to borrow to a bare minimum.
