Leaving a good job to pursue Med/PA School??

[QAtoPA]

I have an OK job in the QA/Food Safety field that has a good salary and good opportunity of growth, but this is not fulfilling, this is not what I want to do. In order for me to completely focus on repairing my GPA, obtain my HCE and becoming a stronger applicant the ideal move would be to leave my current job, get a job in the health field where I would be making much less, but would be gaining my HCE and also working 25-30hrs a week and being able to attend school in a more open schedule.

Has any of you taken this path? Where you had to leave a good job, change into a less paying job/less hrs which enabled you to focus more on HCE/Volunteering/ECs and in school?

Eduardo

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[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

Yes I did this, took a look at the various options & decided to go cold turkey re: quitting working and going solely to school to take all pre-requisites, with the prerequisite high GPAs, study for MCAT, complete ECs, etc. Yes it felt kind of like stepping off a cliff at the time; there are no guarantees and plenty of folk who try like heck and then are not accepted to school. But the alternative was to take a handful of classes during the evening over twice as long a time period, and try to keep working and keep motivated at a day job I knew I wanted to get out of; that didn't seem a great option for career success (i.e. keeping the day job), especially for people with a boss who may know you're studying at night to prep for a career that will necessitate you quitting your job.. guess who gets the ax next time there are layoffs?

Another thing that fit into my thinking was that every year I delayed starting med school meant one fewer year as a practicing physician; value of 1 yr at MD salary in the future versus 1 yr of my current salary; it worked out better to accelerate classes in my case.

So in summary resigning my job was tough, but necessary, to become that incredibly well-qualified candidate you have to be in order to be accepted at a health program, in my opinion/experience.

 

[ArkansasRanger]

I have a good job that I actually like. Granted, I'd rather do something else, but it's something you could retire from. However, I can't quit and pursue pre-Anything because the chances of not getting accepted anywhere are too great, and I'm not a gambling man.

 

[QAtoPA]

Arkansas-

What health care would you like to go into? What do you currently do?

Working in QA/Food Safety is a very interesting job, somewhere where I can actually see myself going to the top, but do I really want to do this, do I really enjoy it 100%? Not really, my path in life lies in medicine, either in a career as an MD/DO or PA so that is why I am taking this risk, work part time in something else that can be flexible with school and start working on my tru career path.

 

[ArkansasRanger]

Arkansas-

What health care would you like to go into? What do you currently do?

Working in QA/Food Safety is a very interesting job, somewhere where I can actually see myself going to the top, but do I really want to do this, do I really enjoy it 100%? Not really, my path in life lies in medicine, either in a career as an MD/DO or PA so that is why I am taking this risk, work part time in something else that can be flexible with school and start working on my tru career path.

PA or physician. If I became a doc I'd, in my current state of mind, go EM or FP. If the new FP/EM residency were four years instead of five I'd jump up and down for that. Yeah, people gripe about primary care - the FP route - but so what. I'm a generalist at heart about everything, and I love the generalist training. That could change later I know.

I like learning about physiology and pathophysiology. I just finished up taking some courses in that, and I've got to admit that it was very interesting. However, there came certain points, in certain chapters - action potentials in the nervous system for instance - that I really didn't give a crap reading about, and I read the book from cover to cover. That kind of puzzles me. Would I really like med school after all? Who can say? Most assuredly I hate chemistry - all physical sciences for that matter unless you include geology which I like. Biology is usually cool. They simply don't interest me, and the idea of taking organic chem and physics is disturbing as I didn't take those in undergrad. I took gen chem but it's been eight years now so I'm going to have to retake it because I can't remember any of it.

 

[Jasil]

I have an OK job in the QA/Food Safety field that has a good salary and good opportunity of growth, but this is not fulfilling, this is not what I want to do. In order for me to completely focus on repairing my GPA, obtain my HCE and becoming a stronger applicant the ideal move would be to leave my current job, get a job in the health field where I would be making much less, but would be gaining my HCE and also working 25-30hrs a week and being able to attend school in a more open schedule.

Has any of you taken this path? Where you had to leave a good job, change into a less paying job/less hrs which enabled you to focus more on HCE/Volunteering/ECs and in school?

Eduardo

Eduardo, it is a tough decison, that my wife and I are going through right now. We are set for a retirement at 55 (21yrs from now) bar any financial catastrophe, but she is going through the same thing.

She runs a Occ. Health Clinic and is ultimately not content and loves medicine do we take the risk? Assuming she get's into med school and makes it out of med school puts us behind 10-12 years, so her going makes no sense financially for us, it's solely about satsifaction.

Then comes in doubt because grades never came easy she always had to study alot to do well. We'll see she is slowly picking up shifts in a hospital and talking to more Dr. friends. It's a hard decision to break out of the mold, take a risk, challenge the utopia? The reward could be very great though......good luck.