General How do I choose which career to pursue?

[Mr.Smile12]

I honestly feel like I am interested in so many careers but weighing the pros and cons is so stressful because each one has nice pros but also some scary cons...

Medicine... offers lots of stability and a large scope for the field. But it also could potentially leave you burned out with no work life balance

Dentistry... offers that work life balance (or so I believe) along with an enjoyable hands on experience. But it could also leave you in a lot of debt more so than medical school. At least this is what it seems like, but I honestly feel like I would rather work as an associate or like a federally funded health center... in that regard I feel like that removes the large debt burden of owning a practice

Pharmacy... offers you the ability to provide the very thing a physician or dentist prescribed you, and help your community by educating them on their medications. It offers a retail experience and a clinical one as well. But it seems as if there is no job stability/openings, and that it’s very stressful at times too

Optometry... well this one I don’t see myself doing as much because I just don’t know much about the eye

Am I missing anything, or am I thinking about this correctly. What are your opinions on these professions and which would you choose and why? I’m just afraid to take a huge risk and hate my life, but I know I want to do one of these.

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[TheBoneDoctah]

From people I know that graduated pharmacy school, they did/are having trouble with finding jobs. I am not sure if this is true only for new graduates though.

For medicine and dentistry there is so much variation to positions. Private practice vs employed, rural practice, surgery vs medicine. I think whatever you go into, (dentistry or medicine) you just gotta figure out what you like and try and build your career around that if that makes sense. There are always pros and cons to every job. Just gotta do your best to maximize the pros and minimize cons as best you can.

 

[lord999]

Pharmacy is getting toward their cyclical apocalypse and should not be considered unless you really want to do the work or inherit a pharmacy. All patient-facing fields are having revenue crises, and there is always the work/life balance (medicine does not have the monopoly as the other professions can comment). Dentists have fairly stressful jobs if they are employees to make their CPT numbers.

But, why don't you volunteer or work in the field to help narrow it down? Nothing teaches like experience besides using the explore document.

 

[AlteredScale]

These assessments are based on secondary opinion. Whether or not they fair an appropriate assessment of the entirety of a field is hard to say since even people in the professions become biased one way or another. I would agree with just volunteering or shadowing in these fields and seeing if these are things you could see yourself doing and enjoying for MOST of your life. None of them come without their surprises and it has to be a risk that you take based on your experiences alone. Which is why In Med school it’s so imperative you immerse yourself in the field because it’s for the long haul and yes, there’s lots of burn out.