Although my current path is occupational therapy, I somehow always end up looking on the podiatry forum. I was, at one time, strongly considering pod school, but I have a few major reserves. I would love it if you all could answer my questions.
·By the time I would matriculate, I would be a (fairly) newlywed. Does pod school allow you any time to spend with your significant other? If so, how much?
·Is it possible to have a child while in pod school? This is very important, as I would like to have one child by 25 or 26.
·How much time (outside of class) is spent studying?
·Would I have to move for my residency?
If you want more answers, you should look at the MD/DO thread. The reason being that Pod school and Med school are pretty much exactly the same in terms of time commitment and amount of work.
1. You will not have a lot of time to spend with your spouse. Generally you have classes from 8-2 Monday-Friday the first 2 years. Additionally, do not forget the anatomy labs. Those are 4+ hours long so some days you get out of school 6pm or later.
Then you have rotations and classes the last 2 years and the time commitment is even more. You will likely do on calls and night shifts depending on what rotation you are in. (The schedule is different for each school but generally the same). At my school, you don't even get a summer off. We only get 2 weeks in the summer from 1st year to 2nd year.
2. It is possible to have a child in school but it will be super hard. I have a female friend that had a child in her 2nd year of med school but ended up having to repeat the year since she failed too many exams. If you search the MD/DO thread, you will see that many people decide to have kids the end of their 4th year or the last year of residency. Additionally, there is no national policy on maternity leave so it varies by school. ( Since all residency are funded by the government and you are technically an employee, the maternity leave policy is standardized during residency, hence why some ppl have kids during residency vs during school. )
3. You will spend on average 1-3 hours a day outside of class studying. The hour will vary depending on each person. Just remember this isn't undergrad where a student may be a psych major vs an engineer major. Everyone will have a full load of upper level science courses.
4. You will most likely have to move for residency unless you are going to the Pod schools in NYC, Philly, Miami and California. You will more than likely have to move compared to the MD/DO students since they have more residency locations to choose from, especially since their med school usually has residency programs.
All that being said, you can do it if you really want it. There are several older people in my class. There are also several newlyweds in my brother's medical school class also and are still chugging along.
