If you could go back in time, would you still choose psychiatry? If still psych, would you have done anything different about your career?

[TheRightMedication]

If my kids are carpenters and plumbers, I'd be quite happy.

For myself, realistically, I was a lower middle class kid in a middle class town. We didn't dream big. Being a physician was the kind of paint-by-numbers pathway to success I needed given my intrinsic and extrinsic limitations. Telling me to grow up to be a hedge fund manager or entrepreneur would have been akin to telling me to go to Hogwarts.

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[clausewitz2]

If my kids are carpenters and plumbers, I'd be quite happy.

For myself, realistically, I was a lower middle class kid in a middle class town. We didn't dream big. Being a physician was the kind of paint-by-numbers pathway to success I needed given my intrinsic and extrinsic limitations. Telling me to grow up to be a hedge fund manager or entrepreneur would have been akin to telling me to go to Hogwarts.

I came from the sort of family for whom the available occupations were: doctor, lawyer, minister, military officer, end of list. I have to go back reasonably far to find someone who wasn't in one of those categories, and he was literally a banker. If an 18th century aristocrat would not recognize it as a profession, it was not on the table. Different set of opportunities and resources but equally stultifying in terms of career horizons.

That said, within those boundaries, I probably choose psychiatry again every time.