I'd echo powermd's thoughts. I would 100% not do this again if I had the choice, and I'm past my intern year. I believe that your time is your most valuable resource, and no amount of money would offset the loss of your prime years of your life: your 20's and 30's. Think about the lifestyle you would lead if you were not a doctor. You would know that you will be sleeping in your bed at least once in a 24 hr period. That no matter how bad your job is, you're going home to crash/whine to your wife/go home and watch tv/whatever. Not so in medicine. You're married to your beeper, and believe me it will go off. You will be working weekends; you will lose the distinction between a weekday and a weekend, because it's all the same. And there is no overtime pay. For instance, I went to work at 8:30 am Monday. It is now Tuesday at 6:30 pm, and I've been working the 34 hrs straight since (with off/on sleep in little spurts), and while at cocktail parties you've got stories none of your friends can tell, while you can look "cool" at parties because you'll get paged and you discreetly try to say, "This is Dr. Drake, I was paged," and everyone will think you're important, and while you can pretend to wear a badge of honor and say that you're needed this Saturday at the hospital and the chicks dig you, it's not worth it. Cocktail parties are once a season. But the other 361 days out of the year, you're living the life in the real world, and you're alone. The mundane tasks of the daily life of a doctor make it pretty tough to stick to your ideals. Very few transcend the mundane monotony and continue to view their daily activities as a true calling like we all say it is on our personal statements. For 90% or more, it becomes just a job. Sad, but that's what my experience is. And if you're not the <10% or so who continue to transcend the job, you're in for a rude awakening. And the game never stops. You get into med school, your buddies say the person who graduates last is still called MD. But then you realize there's subspecialties, and that's where all the procedures/money/increased isolation from primary care b.s.-ology is, and so you want to subspecialize. Well, game is back on. You got to kiss up, somehow create time you don't have to do research, kiss up some more to get fellowship spots, interview, etc. And even during fellowship there's more kissing up involved and the game goes on to get grants, to land a nice job in the community, etc. It never stops. To have an MD, to have been through all that schooling, and to be that old (35 or so) and still be kissing nurses' butts, and to have to pay for parking in the boonies, to not have so much as your own locker to even put your bag (my case), and to be a peon in so many ways, is just inane.
Since I have entered med school, residency, etc, I've quit all my other prior hobbies because the demands of the job are so great. I have lost a number of friends because they're going out weekends while I'm stuck in the hospital. It's not intentional, but you just get sucked into your own MD world and the job can easily consume your life. The same could be true about any pressure-cooker job, but because of the purely large amount of hours you're working consistently, you are your job. The cocktail party stories are great--if you can even make it to the parties in the first place. You get some measure of social respect (but not inside the hospital by nurses), but trust me, if some female or male is going to like you because of your perceived general awesomeness because you're a doctor, they are infatuated with what you represent: prestige, money, security, generalized potential, etc....but NOT with you yourself. In so many ways, the job isn't worth it. Others will disagree, but you have my opinion.
