@DermViser @smq123
I'm going to apologize and attempt to clear things up, and then I'll leave the conversation, since I've expressed whatever thoughts I have on the subject more than enough. I've clearly upset you all with my opinions, and I can absolutely see why. This conversation has been tactless, with each party simply disregarding the others' experience, and I have just been rambling on about my own. I also think that some of this is misunderstanding about our backgrounds. I'm not a 20 year old premed trying to tell you what the world is like. I've had a lot of stops and turns in my life that have given me the experiences I've had, and have also greatly delayed both post-secondary education and entry into medicine. I've been in the work force for almost 3 years since graduating college, and I worked for 2 years before school. I know that both of you are working adults as well, and I really hope I can pull something from this that will help me in my future career. I hope you can pull something from this too, even if it is just knowing that one more person respects both of your perspectives.
smq: With each post I'm understanding more about where you're coming from. The first post did upset me, but that was unwarranted. You cannot make leaps about a person's character, background, or obligations from a post on the internet. I can see how you were angered by that. I don't know what it is like to be a physician, someday I'd like to, and for now what I
should be doing is trying to learn from your perspective, even if I don't agree with it right now. I haven't had the kinds of things that a career in medicine offers like job security, financial security, and (though this is entirely subjective and conjecture on my part) fairly frequent satisfying personal encounters, so it
seemed like you were taking that for granted. Not only is it not my place to tell you this, but I did so very disrespectfully out of my own frustration. I also should have considered that I too take things for granted, things that you cannot, such as the direct responsibility for peoples' lives that you mentioned in your response.
You know NOTHING about me or my daily experience. You know NOTHING of what it's like to be a physician. You know NOTHING of what it's like to toss and turn until 3AM because you wonder if you made the right decision today with your patients. You know NOTHING of what it's like to have nightmares that you killed someone by mistake because you missed something.
Though I felt as though I did make it clear that I understand this, I clearly did not, and that is my fault. I do not know what it is like to be a physician, and I imagine that it is at times nothing short of harrowing.
You know NOTHING of what it's like to have an MBA tell you how to treat your patient, despite the fact that you spent SEVEN years of your life trying to learn how to treat patients.
No, I don't know what this is like. I am not a physician. I do know what it is like to have a high-power government worker, with zero training in your field, ignore your consultations and months of hard work simply because he didn't want to read the 100+ page summary report that you and your co-workers made (that work had implications in war zones in Afghanistan and almost certainly would have prevented deaths). I will say this though, your experience is far more intimate. You are the one who makes the decisions, so even if there is external pressure from an MBA to treat people in a certain way, you must ultimately make the decisions. That is a far more morally agonizing situation, and I understand why that drags on you, even if I don't understand how it feels.
You know NOTHING of what it's like to have your personal life crash around you while still trying to see a patient every 15 minutes for 8 hours a day.
I don't know about seeing patients, but I've certainly had my personal life crash around me, and I still had to work. At the time I was working frantically almost 12 hours a day in a fairly hostile environment. There are very few feelings worse than fighting a losing battle at work while the one we really care about is raging on outside of the office. It will sink you, to know that you
have to keep working or else lose your job, meanwhile all you want to do is leave and do all the things you
need to be doing for the people you love. I think we probably feel pretty similarly about this.
You know NOTHING of what it's like to wake up at 3AM every day, for 6 days a week, just so you can finish your paperwork and your charts.
Well I never wake up at 3AM, but there was a period of about two years when I woke up at 5AM and worked 12 hours a day at a drug therapy start-up. If you don't know, these things tend to be pressure cookers where sink or swim means billions or bankrupt. I'm sure you know some of this, but just getting through phase II clinical trials requires tens of millions of investor money. When results are lagging, investors squeeze the CEO, the CEO squeezes the supervisor, and the supervisor squeezes the employees. There were only 12 initial employees, but each of us were screamed at for things completely out of our control at least once a week. The supervisor would curse and threaten to fire us because the drug wasn't doing well in the trials and the investors were unhappy. We'd work super long days and weekends looking for results that were simply never going to appear with this drug, because if we didn't we would be fired, and the chance of getting a decent reference from them (my first full-time industry job), was zero if you quit. That company eventually crashed and burned, but the whole time I worked there seems like a dream now. Amazingly, this isn't even an entirely uncommon thing in drug start-ups. Keep in mind I'm not trying to compete with your experience, the two are entirely different. Being a doctor, particularly in residency, seems to be incredibly stressful.
You know NOTHING of what it's like to have your significant other, the most important person in your life, tell you that the job is ruining your relationship and he worries that it will drive you two apart.
I don't know why you would assume this. Sadly, I do know what this is like. Except she never told me, she just left.
So don't talk to me about "financial security" and "reasonable hours." when you truly know NOTHING of what it's like to be a physician.
It's very hard to argue that physicians aren't financially secure, but I suppose in certain specialties and through certain parts of your life you spend a lot of time thinking about finances, and there is certainly something to be said for that. I only mentioned reasonable hours because you had said yourself that they were reasonable in your previous post, and I only ever said that they were hours that you had deemed reasonable. From the numbers I've seen, reasonable hours is definitely
not a perk of being a physician, even after residency.
No, I'm not saying that someone who works a meaningless corporate 9-5 job is "perfectly happy." I never said that. But what I DID say is that *I*might be happier in that case. ME, just ME. I'm not presuming to consider what other people would say if asked to compare. Your reading comprehension needs a serious amount of work.
My mistake, I think I was reading between the lines too much, and I wasn't completely level-headed when I read your post. I would be careful about ever calling someone's career meaningless, but I suppose it was introduced that way, so no harm done. I think I got mad at this comment for the same reason you got mad at mine, because each of us were presuming to know things about a particular career/life without experiencing it first hand.
I definitely took your post too harshly. You're allowed to complain about the things that make you unhappy about your job without always making sure everyone knows that you're grateful for the things that you do have, especially in the company of other people who have or will someday have that job. This might be obnoxious if you said this kind of thing in public, but of course on a pre-med forum this is
perfectly acceptable. I'm actually pretty happy we had this stupid internet fight. It's a good reminder to never presume anything about anyone's life aside from your own. I'm sorry for my intrusions. You are entitled to whatever beliefs you may have, just as I am entitled to mine. I hope you can take something from my responses as well.
DermViser: I guess I just wish that you had taken the time to spell out my misunderstanding, instead of just dismissing me. We're probably not too far off in age, and I would expect more respect if we were talking in person. However, like I said to smq, I can see why my posts aggravated you. I truly do know
nothing about what it is like to be a doctor, and I have to respect your opinions on the profession, regardless of what I think of your responses.
