So what has been your personal experience? I haven't talked to anyone or read any threads here where people who have spent time between undergrad and medical school working have said that working has been deterimental, both in the application process and for personal development. And from what I've read, most unhappy medical students and doctors are those who went straight from undergrad to medical school to doctor.
I feel that I made the correct choice. I love science, I love reading about science, I love learning about science, but I hate doing lab research. I need to say it again, I hate doing lab research.
Anyways, here is my story. I didn't go to college right out of high school because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. So I worked several different jobs and found a subject and a job that I would love to do. But to get this job (the job written listed below), I needed a B.S. degree and it required a background in the sciences. So I went to a local liberal arts college to get a science degree.
The local liberal arts college only had chemistry, biochemistry, and biology majors. So I decided to major in biology. Now it's time to graduate this May with my biology degree. I contacted the company that I wanted to work for (I kept in touch with them during my undergradute days) before I started college and gained employment. I work this job from home and work during my free time. I get paid based on the number of sales produced.
So I was still looking for a day job. I did a lot of research to find a science job that I would be interested in and couldn't find a single job that I would enjoy that would pay more then $35,000 a year. I set my mark at $35,000 for entry level jobs because I made $30,000 a year before I went to college. I didn't go to college to make the same salary, or even take a job to get paid less. I was shocked that the average salary for the majority of science jobs for recent graduates was around the $25,000 to $30,000 range.
During my job search, I took into account future opportunities and quality of life. I found that a Ph.D. is way overrated. There are hundreds of more people with a Ph.D. then there are jobs that a person with a Ph.D. can work. I learned that I could get an IT job that pays good money for entry level and get a higher level IT job in a couple of years and make more then the average Ph.D. in the biological sciences gets paid. I found that when I put in the average sales already produced a month for my other job and add in my IT job, I would be making good money.
So I contacted a recruiting tech company and talked to them about my skills and they helped me land a Help Desk Analyst job with a starting salary of $60,000. I could get a work at home job to work in my spare time (part-time) as well. There are a lot jobs a person can do with experience in certain areas of IT that allows them to work from home. When gas will be at 4 dollars a gallon this summer, I feel this is a smart way to go.
My part-time job involves reading the medical/science literature and editing articles and writing articles. I do marketing, editing, and writing for the company. I even add in daily news findings. So I still get to read the science and medical literature. I love this because I get the freedom to write about what I think is important and chose the articles I think are important and get to pick the news releases that I think are important and publish them all. Once I get a salary of over $100,000 a year doing this work, I might just do this from home and work a part-time IT job. I enjoy the mixture of working on the computers during the day (I started working part-time...10 hours a week.. for my IT job to get the training and experience started so I can go full-time after May) and writing about science at night. I can even develop a science writing career from home because of my experience.
In my junior and senior year of college, I found that the science classes were boring and easy. I learned how to take the exams and would always get A's on the exams. This was the start of the downward spiral for my interest in wanting to work in the lab and continue on with my education (masters, MD, or PhD).
I found that the highest paying entry level science job was doing sales for a pharma company. I don't care to travel as much as a pharma rep does. So I said no to that type of career. Plus, I needed to stay at home at night to work my other job.
I did work in a lab for two years. I loved it for the first few months, but I got sick of doing the same thing over and over and over. In my classes, they would always keep going over the same scientific theory. I kept thinking to myself, I learned the scientific theory in elementry school and why do I have to keep hearing about this in every single science course. I even started to stop going to my classes because the lectures were becoming annoying. In the last two semesters in my science courses, we have had to write a research paper and review research articles. These assignments were so easy they became so boring. I would just write the research papers the night before they would be due.
Now that I already have the jobs I want, I think I'm done with my education for a while. I might still get a masters degree just so I can teach some distance education courses in the sciences.
I did work in a hospital for a little over three years and I enjoyed the envrionment, but I just couldn't see myself being a doctor. I did think about becoming a doctor for a year, but I decided against it when I learned about all of the crap one has to deal during the training and how much debt one gets into.
