What's the most unusual first, etc. career anyone here has had?

[rph3664]

If you want one better, Myron Rolle is a current 3rd year med student who was not only the starting safety at FSU, but a Rhodes Scholar and 6th round draft pick in the 2010 NFL draft.

I saw on NBC News this evening that he matched for a neurosurgery residency.

Today's newspaper also said that today was Debi Thomas' 50th birthday.

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[austintr]

Pardon the bump, but this thread is awesome. I'm no Olympian, but I've been a hog farmer, asbestos abatement technician, gave research subjects some weird/sketchy drugs in clinical trials, and most recently...ahem...removed bones, tendons, skin, eyes and hearts from donors for transplant. Glad to be finally starting med school and putting these vocations to bed for good.

 

[rhenna]

I was a computer programmer, then went into the video game industry. Going from game designer to doctor was a rough essay to write, haha.

 

[cellsaver]

... I've been a hog farmer....

this will pay off in spades once you start interacting with hospital staff at all levels. You will be surprised how educated and well dressed some hogs can be.

Congrats for getting accepted. Keep your eyes on the sheep.

 

[Crayola227]

I was a restaurant dishwasher/busser/prep person,
some sort of garbage collector,
research chemist,
did some sort of elderly ass-wiping to try to keep grammas in their own homes,
spanged when I was homeless (asking for "spare change" = "spange-ing", not exactly a job...)
and then I worked in a bar, but I won't say exactly what my position was

 

[cellsaver]

..and then I worked in a bar, but I won't say exactly what my position was

You are so much more efficacious than an SSRI! Ever consider stand up comedy? Hillary and Trump did well at it

 

[cellsaver]

I had a humiliating job and I lied on a job application to get it - incomplete educational background. I was facing homelessness, living in the attic of the fundamentalist religious family who monitored /judged my every move, and I slept in my car to avoid them. I was an orderly in an operating room to mop bloody / flesh debris off of OR floors, wiped down walls with bodily fluids, disposed of hazardous waste and be anyone's beatch. They yelled, cussed, insulted and ground us into the floor. It was humiliating bc I had a BS Degree. My supervisor eventually caught on about my sin of omission. She called me into her office and asked me why I lied. I told her my story.

She said she only had an AA Degree and wished she had a BS degree. I was promoted and soon after got accepted to medical school first time around.

It pays to be everyone's beatch sometimes

 

[Skiiiiiing]

Working these ****ty type jobs should actually be a plus on a med school app.

Putting up with office space bull**** demonstrates endless emotional control

 

[Crayola227]

Working these ****ty type jobs should actually be a plus on a med school app.

Putting up with office space bull**** demonstrates endless emotional control

I know for a fact it does. Even up to my residency interviews, the most popular item on my resume everyone loved to talk to me about was my job as a garbage collector. I think it imparts the image of someone who rolls up their sleeves, and that's always appreciated in any employee, especially a doc.

 

[cellsaver]

I know for a fact it does. Even up to my residency interviews, the most popular item on my resume everyone loved to talk to me about was my job as a garbage collector. I think it imparts the image of someone who rolls up their sleeves, and that's always appreciated in any employee, especially a doc.

I have worked with thousands of physicians literally and one stands out the most. He was the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, known as "Boss", and would not bat an eye about pushing a mop, tying red plastic bags or pushing them on wheeled carts to the Housekeeping Dept outside the OR

He had one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the country amongst heart surgeons and trained under the big boys at Texas Heart. Yet to hear him talk, which was rare, you would have thought he was just a good ol boy from the Deep South who worshiped God, loved his wife, admitted she raised the kids and they put up with him. He just killed us with his humility. When he retired the music truly died

 

[rph3664]

I know for a fact it does. Even up to my residency interviews, the most popular item on my resume everyone loved to talk to me about was my job as a garbage collector. I think it imparts the image of someone who rolls up their sleeves, and that's always appreciated in any employee, especially a doc.

A while back, a local newspaper columnist addressed the fact that garbagemen were paid more than schoolteachers. He got a lot of letters (in the pre-email era) addressing this, and one of them was from a married couple; she was a teacher and he was a garbageman - who had a master's degree. They had moved here for her job; he was unable to find one in his field and took the garbageman job just because they needed the money, and was VERY surprised to find out that he loved it! Of course, he didn't plan to do it forever, but it kept their bills paid for the time being, and they added that it's a filthy, dangerous job, and there's a lot more to know about it than most people realize.

(Kind of like being a pharmacist! )

More recently, I was at a meetup and a woman there who was an assistant manager at Steak & Shake asked me, "How do you know so much about fast food? I thought you were a pharmacist" and I replied, "I am, but I haven't always been, and the jobs are not as different as you might think."

 

[Immunorunner]

The current World Memory champion is currently a medical student. Most interesting other job/background to me.

Lessons from America’s First Memory World Champion

 

[mavric1298]

Outside my last 8 years in healthcare -
Lets see, mowed greens at a golfcourse,
cleaned horse stalls for a crazy lady (who when I first got there hadn't cleaned them all winder. Think 1'+ matted straw and feces bound together with urine, so dense it had basically become $hit concrete)
Action sports photographer/freelance writer
Ran a quote unquote "high end" burrito stand for drunk people (grew up in a smallish town, had no restaurants opens after bars closed so we were the first/only stand allowed in town...severed 100+ pounds of chicken a night from a stand with a Mongolian type grill my senior year of HS staying up till 4am). As part of it did wedding/event catering as well out of the commissary (not burritos though, french cuisine )
Delivered pizza
Line cooked at high end german restaurant in Park City, then worked at a resturant that did curry/Indian, as well an Japanese (weird combo right?)

And looking back, I learned something from each of those jobs

 

[rph3664]

Bumping a zombie thread: I dove down an Internet rabbit hole, and found an obituary for a physician who gave up her practice a few years previously to be the owner of a painting and interior decorating business. It sounds like her husband already did that, and she left medicine to devote more time to this. The business still exists, too.

 

[Tangerine123]

I know an MD that went on to become a pop singer. She does really well.

Another MD that I know went into architecture/construction and learned to pilot her own plane. I constantly see her posts in social media

Although I never met her personally, I know of an MD that after her ophthalmology residency decided to go to vet school and now is a vet ophthalmologist

 

[Fluidity of Movement]

This is a very interesting thread so Im happy for the necro.

I don't want to dox myself but my first career in quotation marks was more or less just surviving life. I had myriad of service and management jobs alongside many self start up sidegig businesses, military, all while dealing with gang violence, health conditions, financial fallouts, and families being torn apart.

I did have an opportunity to take over take over a pizza business, and expand the number of atores, but I passed on that to finally come back to pre med

 

[Sky1.3]

I used to do research on insect behavior.
I have also held jobs biking compost around, counting flowers, having hours long conversations trying to persuade people thousands of miles from me to vote against Trump, and caring for lab populations of bees, spiders, mosquitos, and mantises. It was joyful work but mostly minimum wage.

 

[astrostellar]

I used to do research on insect behavior.

I love this.

I'm a government interpreter for nuclear treaties, so that's... something.