Well put. Many good points made in this post.
1. No surgical specialty is "easy." Period.
Yep.
2. When it's bad it's real bad. I don't know what PRS is like yet, but we see them in the trauma pit sewing up face lacs at 2 AM on a very regular basis. How often will depend on the specific program you match in to. Don't forget about hand call either...
Depends on your program. I trained at a place where you weren't allowed to say no to anything. I rotated at a "country club" program. There was a huge difference.
3. One of my biggest frustrations with residency has been my inability to work-out as much as I want and having to eat the s*** food in the cafeteria when on call. Granted, I was an athlete my entire life so it's always been something I enjoy. I'm not sure if others would be as irritated by working out "only" twice a week.
Lots of sacrifices during training. It gets better when you call the shots on your schedule. But for six years you dance when they tell you to dance.
4. A chief resident once told me the best career decision a person can make is their spouse. I've found that to be incredibly true. The support at home, both emotional and financial, is priceless and keeps me from both punching a hole through a wall (not a good look) or letting the interest run wild on my student loans.
Yep. Have watched marriages survive during residency and have seen a few crumble.
5. If you wait until you've got enough money and time to easily raise kids, you'll be 45. Just go for it and figure it out as you go. Plenty of residents, even in gen surg, have kids. Is it easy? Prob not.
Yep. There are some "bad" times, but very few "good" times.
6. A solely reconstructive private practice is pretty hard to pull off. The cases are long and the reimbursements have dropped quite a bit. There are many threads with PRS attending level input on SDN addressing that topic .
True private practice as a reconstructive plastic surgeon would be tough. Most private practice plastic surgeons do a mix (see @droliver ). More and more people are moving to an employed model, where they do a mix that leans towards reconstructive. This would be the Kaiser-Permanente/Intermountain Health setup where you are salaried, maybe with a performance incentive. The plus is that you can make a pretty decent living doing primarily reconstructive surgery. The minus is that you sacrifice a fair bit of control. Lots of people are moving in that direction, especially if they aren't primarily interested in cosmetic surgery.
Last, there are about a million hurdles you have to get over between now(pre-med) and the residency match as a MS4. Work as hard as you can at everything you do regardless of whether or not you think it's relevant to your future. That was my mistake when I was younger. That's prob the best strategy at your stage.