Imagine if all jobs took 4 years of college and paid $30,000 a year

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noworkhistory

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And I mean ALL jobs....

Would you still choose medicine? If so, why?

If not, what job(s) would you choose, and why?

Personally I would want to answer this question as honestly as I could. Only one chance to be happy in life and such....I want to see if your responses can help me get the ball rolling in my own thinking about it....
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noworkhistory said:
And I mean ALL jobs....

Would you still choose medicine? If so, why?

If not, what job(s) would you choose, and why?

Personally I would want to answer this question as honestly as I could. Only one chance to be happy in life and such....I want to see if your responses can help me get the ball rolling in my own thinking about it....
Click to expand...

You can get jobs right now that give you 30k a year without a college degree. I don't quite understand this question. Do you mean even if medicine only took 4 years and you got paid 30k? I don't get it.
 
dsk89 said:
You can get jobs right now that give you 30k a year without a college degree. I don't quite understand this question. Do you mean even if medicine only took 4 years and you got paid 30k? I don't get it.
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Yes....
 
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noworkhistory said:
Yes....
Click to expand...

lol.

and my answer is yes. not in it for money. in fact i think if everything paid the same, and (assuming) everyone had no/negligible debt from education (and the 30k = what you take home after deducting malpractice insurance etc), why wouldn't you do medicine if you wanted to?

(better quesion might be all jobs paid $10/hr)

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk
 
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Hell yes.

The one thing that "annoys" me about medicine is the length of training required.. if somehow, it only took four years to train doctors then there's be absolutely no doubt what I would want to do for the rest of my life.
 
noworkhistory said:
And I mean ALL jobs....

Would you still choose medicine? If so, why?

If not, what job(s) would you choose, and why?

Personally I would want to answer this question as honestly as I could. Only one chance to be happy in life and such....I want to see if your responses can help me get the ball rolling in my own thinking about it....
Click to expand...


This is the stupidest iteration of a "I'd eat a poop hotdog 'cause I'm a premed" thread I have seen in a while.
 
noworkhistory said:
And I mean ALL jobs....

Would you still choose medicine? If so, why?

If not, what job(s) would you choose, and why?

Personally I would want to answer this question as honestly as I could. Only one chance to be happy in life and such....I want to see if your responses can help me get the ball rolling in my own thinking about it....
Click to expand...

You forgot residency.
Also, med school would still be more intense. And I don't want to spend 4 years working my butt off like crazy just to make an average salary.
But I don't know what else I would do beside med.
 
What if all jobs paid you 10k/year after 4 years of junior college, but you could only work one day (but any day of the year), and they killed you after the day is over. No life insurance. You get three free meals for that day, but only within a mile radius of the job site. No, you don't get to spend that $38 you earned that day before you died.

Would you still do medicine? If so, why?
 
pkwraith said:
What if all jobs paid you 10k/year after 4 years of junior college, but you could only work one day (but any day of the year), and they killed you after the day is over. No life insurance. You get three free meals for that day, but only within a mile radius of the job site. No, you don't get to spend that $38 you earned that day before you died.

Would you still do medicine? If so, why?
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Yes, but only if my last meal can be the poop hotdog.
 
I would have multiple jobs, medicine still being one of them.
 
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TxResident said:
Techniques derp. :>

Also I find this topic to be pointless.
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It's not pointless if, like me, you haven't ever (so far) tried to, and would like to, figure out the objective functional value (and purpose, for that matter) of each job out there by fitting together the specific duties of all jobs and coming up with an objective big picture of the world instead of, like me, making a career decision based on having been pushed and pulled around all your life by salary figures and prestige and anything else besides what specific duties a particular job entails.
 
Stumpyman said:
This is gold. :thumbup:
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Duh, lol, the topic makes sense, especially after you read my latest post. I think it just might be a little bit of a taboo subject, but I for one am completely open to this level of self-honesty.
 
kami333 said:
That's what sororities are for :D
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Escort services - apprenticeship for 4 years, etc. Not really the point of the thread but I thought I'd answer - thread is definitely more abstract than this.

"It's just ridiculous that an elementary school teacher is paid $20,000 a year. What kind of economic values do we have where such situations are even possible?"

^That's more the line of thinking that I was going for. And that's not a rhetorical question. I don't know the answer. I'm asking the members of SDN for the answer. 'Cause you're all doctors or what ever, so you're smart, so you should know, and stuff. And I'm not being condescending, I just don't know how to figure it out myself. I really want to know how the economics salary algorithm spits out $20,000 for elementary school teacher and $200,000 for a doctor, and $40,000 for a college professor, and $90,000 for a lawyer, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM-G0bkl8MQ
 
I wish I'd taken those escort service electives in undergrad :(
 
noworkhistory said:
Escort services - apprenticeship for 4 years, etc. Not really the point of the thread but I thought I'd answer - thread is definitely more abstract than this.

"It's just ridiculous that an elementary school teacher is paid $20,000 a year. What kind of economic values do we have where such situations are even possible?"

^That's more the line of thinking that I was going for. And that's not a rhetorical question. I don't know the answer. I'm asking the members of SDN for the answer. 'Cause you're all doctors or what ever, so you're smart, so you should know, and stuff. And I'm not being condescending, I just don't know how to figure it out myself. I really want to know how the economics salary algorithm spits out $20,000 for elementary school teacher and $200,000 for a doctor, and $40,000 for a college professor, and $90,000 for a lawyer, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM-G0bkl8MQ
Click to expand...

Because being an elementary teacher requires four years of relatively easy training (even less in some states - you can teach without a bachelor's). Being a physician requires a minimum of 11 years of intense training, significantly more depending on the specialty. It has less to do with how "valuable" (whatever that means) the position is and more about the amount of time/cost required to train along with the supply/demand. Both are very favorable with respect to physician salaries and not so much for the average elementary school teacher.

(sent from my phone)
 
What's with the emphasis on escort services? Is this to illustrate that most jobs are "under" medicine, and that my suggestion that all jobs require college is therefore stupid? The relative value of jobs is not the point of this thread anyway---it's the relative function of jobs. Value can be determined later.
 
The reason I believe this topic is dumb: do you really believe ALL jobs should require 4 years of college / should get paid 30,000 a year?

4 years of college portion: janitorial positions, service industries, etc. It just doesn't make sense.

Salary portion: 30,000 a year? What about families with a stay at home mom/dad? What about high stress jobs? What about jobs that include the risk of death in working them?

This whole scenario kind of seems like Communism in my head (call me cynical), but that's just how I see it.

Now if this was actually true, I'd still want to be a doctor, hell, I'd want to be a doctor even more just because of how much easier it would be to become a doctor.

Troll portion: I want to be the guy at the front of Walmart/Sam's that waves hi to people and get paid 30,000 :(.
 
NickNaylor said:
Because being an elementary teacher requires four years of relatively easy training (even less in some states - you can teach without a bachelor's). Being a physician requires a minimum of 11 years of intense training, significantly more depending on the specialty. It has less to do with how "valuable" (whatever that means) the position is and more about the amount of time/cost required to train along with the supply/demand. Both are very favorable with respect to physician salaries and not so much for the average elementary school teacher.

(sent from my phone)
Click to expand...

That training period could easily be condensed hugely. Cut it down to 5 years, and there go the high salaries. So why is it not condensed? Most people say it's because we want to make it harder so that only smart people can get in. But it seems that it's purposely kept ridiculous for some other reason, though, because it's not like smart people are better at being doctors, or something. What that reason is, we may never know.....
 
noworkhistory said:
What's with the emphasis on escort services? Is this to illustrate that most jobs are "under" medicine, and that my suggestion that all jobs require college is therefore stupid? The relative value of jobs is not the point of this thread anyway---it's the relative function of jobs. Value can be determined later.
Click to expand...

Really? You're REALLY going to say that after your specific prompt was ABOUT THE VALUE.
 
noworkhistory said:
That training period could easily be condensed hugely. Cut it down to 5 years, and there go the high salaries. So why is it not condensed? Most people say it's because we want to make it harder so that only smart people can get in. But it seems that it's purposely kept ridiculous for some other reason, though, because it's not like smart people are better at being doctors, or something. What that reason is, we may never know.....
Click to expand...


Please explain.
 
You do realize that the whole entire medical field would be completely changed if things worked that way, right OP? There's absolutely no way to answer this question with the present information (and even if you gave us a completely detailed outline of how your alternate medical universe works, your question is still not worth taking the time to answer).

There are some really low-end threads out there about the extent to which a pre-med would become a doctor, but this one blows them all out of the water in terms of naivete.
 
TxResident said:
The reason I believe this topic is dumb: do you really believe ALL jobs should require 4 years of college / should get paid 30,000 a year?

4 years of college portion: janitorial positions, service industries, etc. It just doesn't make sense.

Salary portion: 30,000 a year? What about families with a stay at home mom/dad? What about high stress jobs? What about jobs that include the risk of death in working them?

This whole scenario kind of seems like Communism in my head (call me cynical), but that's just how I see it.

Now if this was actually true, I'd still want to be a doctor, hell, I'd want to be a doctor even more just because of how much easier it would be to become a doctor.

Troll portion: I want to be the guy at the front of Walmart/Sam's that waves hi to people and get paid 30,000 :(.
Click to expand...


I know, I thought communism at first too because of the everything equal thing, but I'm not saying it SHOULD be this way, I'm only encouraging you to imagine it this way in order to help you determine your true motivations for pursuing medicine, and also to demonstrate that medicine is hyped up for some reason. Any other profession could be hyped up like this, too, but they aren't. You could make it so an elementary school teacher had to go to school for 11 years if you really wanted to frame it that way. So sure we invent stories about why certain professions have the salaries and training time that they do, but you have to look at the bigger picture in order to see if these qualities couldn't be characteristic of other professions too and it's just that for some reason they aren't. A doctor and lawyer being highly paid is not a new thing----it's hundreds of years old. That seems really peculiar to me, that's it's ALWAYS been that way and has never changed. Seems like more of a power thing than an objective economic utility thing, in other words.
 
Dires said:
Please explain.
Click to expand...

This was a suggestion from my doctor. I guess I assumed that if she thought it, then most people do, too. She said that it's purposely harder because so many people are applying these days and adcoms want to make sure they're getting the best and the brightest.
 
Stumpyman said:
You do realize that the whole entire medical field would be completely changed if things worked that way, right OP? There's absolutely no way to answer this question with the present information (and even if you gave us a completely detailed outline of how your alternate medical universe works, your question is still not worth taking the time to answer).

There are some really low-end threads out there about the extent to which a pre-med would become a doctor, but this one blows them all out of the water in terms of naivete.
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be "worth it" I'm guessing only because so many people would lose their high salaries if it were cut down to 5 years of training?

I think you mean more "simple" and less "naive"....
 
noworkhistory said:
That training period could easily be condensed hugely. Cut it down to 5 years, and there go the high salaries. So why is it not condensed? Most people say it's because we want to make it harder so that only smart people can get in. But it seems that it's purposely kept ridiculous for some other reason, though, because it's not like smart people are better at being doctors, or something. What that reason is, we may never know.....
Click to expand...

As a pre-med, you are hardly in a place to say what aspects of the medical curriculum can be condensed. That said, I agree that you might be able to eliminate a year or two from undergrad (similar to what the UK does) by studying only pre-reqs, but the fact of the matter is that a physician develops highly specialized, technical, and unique skills that must be learned over long lengths of time. I wouldn't trust a "physician" that did only four years of training. Almost every graduating medical student will admit that they are no where near ready to take care of patients independently. While much of medical education is algorithmic and pattern recognition, you don't acquire that knowledge by sitting in your room and memorizing everything. There's a reason why most people say that the first two years of medical school prepare them very little for clinical medicine.

(sent from my phone)
 
It makes PERFECT, EASY sense why doctors/lawyers get paid more than an elementary school teacher. They have longer training, longer work hours, etc. etc.

It would be strange if people actually would ever think for one second an elementary teacher would have the same salary as a professional. And I don't think anyone with functional brains would expect a physician to have 5 years of training(as opposed to the 11 out of high school) and actually not get sued like crazy every day.
 
NickNaylor said:
As a pre-med, you are hardly in a place to say what aspects of the medical curriculum can be condensed. That said, I agree that you might be able to eliminate a year or two from undergrad (similar to what the UK does) by studying only pre-reqs, but the fact of the matter is that a physician develops highly specialized, technical, and unique skills that must be learned over long lengths of time. I wouldn't trust a "physician" that did only four years of training. Almost every graduating medical student will admit that they are no where near ready to take care of patients independently. While much of medical education is algorithmic and pattern recognition, you don't acquire that knowledge by sitting in your room and memorizing everything. There's a reason why most people say that the first two years of medical school prepare them very little for clinical medicine.

(sent from my phone)
Click to expand...

"highly specialized, technical and unique skills"

^Same for any profession

"MUST be learned over long lengths of time"

^BS
 
noworkhistory said:
"highly specialized, technical and unique skills"

^Same for any profession

"MUST be learned over long lengths of time"

^BS
Click to expand...

I can't believe I just realized it...

It was 10/10 up to this point...

Now its 0/10 :(.
Well played OP.
 
KnuxNole said:
It makes PERFECT, EASY sense why doctors/lawyers get paid more than an elementary school teacher. They have longer training, longer work hours, etc. etc.

It would be strange if people actually would ever think for one second an elementary teacher would have the same salary as a professional. And I don't think anyone with functional brains would expect a physician to have 5 years of training(as opposed to the 11 out of high school) and actually not get sued like crazy every day.
Click to expand...

Longer work hours, that's many many jobs.

Why's it strange? I think you're using "strange" in the "strange because it's not currently true" sense rather than looking at it more objectively.

Training could be condensed down to 5 to 7 years - 2 for undergrad, 2 or 3 for med school, 1 or 2 for residency.
 
TxResident said:
I can't believe I just realized it...

It was 10/10 up to this point...

Now its 0/10 :(.
Well played OP.
Click to expand...

Yes, the brevity ("^BS") was supposed to be funny. But seriously, you could spend the second two years of undergrad doing the first two years of medical school. Mix the 3rd and 4th year of medical school with residency, you're talking 5 or 6 years. 7 tops. Why make it so much harder? The people behind the doctors are not that special. Take that away, and you have a service you're providing that's even less important than a power plant operator.

Doh!

Intensity of work, let alone length of training, lol, should never, ever be commensurate with salary. Hard work, yes, but not intensity of work.
 
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noworkhistory said:
Longer work hours, that's many many jobs.

Why's it strange? I think you're using "strange" in the "strange because it's not currently true" sense rather than looking at it more objectively.

Training could be condensed down to 5 to 7 years - 2 for undergrad, 2 or 3 for med school, 1 or 2 for residency.
Click to expand...

How many of these "many, many jobs" are more than 50 hrs a week? :confused:

And yes, it's strange. I would laugh at someone directly if they said all of the above with a serious face, and wasn't just joking around or talking about a "what if" scenario that was never gonna happen.

Of course, physician have longer work hours and more training than most people with a job out of college, that's just basic knowledge of the physician track.

For your condensing stuff....2 years for undergrad, 3 years of med school..."maybe".

Hypothetically....
A) 2 years of pure pre-med classes, and assuming this person wants to get out of college quickly and they know from day 1 they wanna be a doctor. Which means, no other classes, etc. Not everyone wants to be a doctor fresh out of high school, and hopefully the 20 years olds have matured in 2 years.

B) 3 years of med school. Lets say 1.5 years of basic sciences, and core rotations and very few electives. I hope those people know what they wanna specialize in, which could work for most people. I do agree that MS4 has fluff rotations. You obviously have to have rotations before residency, unless you want attendings to spit on your face every morning.

C) 1 year of residency. LOLno
Ca) 2 years of residency....eh. I feel like being a senior resident, you still don't know much, and another year of intense training(which is not comparable to being a student by far) could do someone good. That's like asking to be a bare-bones physician.
 
Nonetheless, I'm still going into medicine because I want to be a member of the best and the brightest. I just love that feeling of being a utility player, mostly. It's the security....all those options, while so few others can say the same.... A large part of my undergrad class will major in business or education and end up working office jobs or something. I'm just so happy. So blessed. So happy that I'm blessed.
 
It's good that you are blessed :)

Keep in mind though, that there are tons of really smart people in the business world, and some "not so bright" people in medicine!
 
noworkhistory said:
Nonetheless, I'm still going into medicine because I want to be a member of the best and the brightest. I just love that feeling of being a utility player, mostly. It's the security....all those options, while so few others can say the same.... A large part of my undergrad class will major in business or education and end up working office jobs or something. I'm just so happy. So blessed. So happy that I'm blessed.
Click to expand...

Fortunately your blessedness isn't going to get you into medical school, so I would suggest educating yourself about how the real world works and the realities of medical training. You have experienced exactly zero of it yet you seem to believe that you're more qualified than people that study and develop curricula professionally to say what is necessary. Your naivete/ignorance is astounding, yet you seem entirely unaware that you don't know much. That attitude is going to shut you out immediately.

(sent from my phone)
 
KnuxNole said:
It's good that you are blessed :)

Keep in mind though, that there are tons of really smart people in the business world, and some "not so bright" people in medicine!
Click to expand...

No such thing as a 'not so bright' person in medicine. Maybe careless or something else that looks like stupid, but you can't be literally stupid. You have to memorize all that information - you can't be not bright. No way someone who isn't the best and the brightest could do it. On the other hand, with business, yes there are bright people, but they're not as bright as people in medicine, unless of course there are people in business (or any other field) who aren't living up to their potential. You have to be wicked smaht to be a doctor, and doctors are the smartest people in the world.
 
NickNaylor said:
Fortunately you're blessedness isn't going to get you into medical school, so I would suggest educating yourself about how the real world works and the realities of medical training. You have experienced exactly zero of it yet you seem to believe that you're more qualified than people that study and develop curricula professionally to say what is necessary. Your naivete/ignorance is astounding, yet you seem entirely unaware that you don't know much. That attitude is going to shut you out immediately.

(sent from my phone)
Click to expand...

I never said I was more qualified lol. Where did I say that? I'm just trying to get the big picture, man! I'm not ignorant! I'm totally open to new information! Completely and totally! :) In fact I'm so eager that it's incredible. I've never been this ready to learn in my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
noworkhistory said:
I never said I was more qualified lol. Where did I say that? I'm just trying to get the big picture, man! I'm not ignorant! I'm totally open to new information! Completely and totally! :) In fact I'm so eager that it's incredible. I've never been this ready to learn in my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

You don't have to say it. It's patently obvious in your responses. If you actually wanted to "get the big picture, man" you wouldn't be as combative and dismissive of others as you are. Of course it doesn't matter because it's also obvious that you're a troll, but carry on.

(sent from my phone)
 
noworkhistory said:
No such thing as a 'not so bright' person in medicine. Maybe careless or something else that looks like stupid, but you can't be literally stupid. You have to memorize all that information - you can't be not bright. No way someone who isn't the best and the brightest could do it. On the other hand, with business, yes there are bright people, but they're not as bright as people in medicine, unless of course there are people in business (or any other field) who aren't living up to their potential. You have to be wicked smaht to be a doctor, and doctors are the smartest people in the world.
Click to expand...

You don't have to be that smart to memorize stuff. There are dingbats who can make it through med school just fine.

And there are hundreds of "not so bright" people in medicine. A rare thing, but not unheard of.
 
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