Question about Job Change

[AnotherLawyer]

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Hopefully some adcoms and others with more experience can weigh in.

The short version: Will taking a new job two years before I hope to start medical school make it look like I'm unsure of what I want to be doing?

The slightly longer version: I've been an attorney in the military for close to a decade. I like my job but because of family reasons I don't plan to stay on active duty much longer. This decision is entirely independent of medical school.

Plan A for getting out is to start medical school in 2018. Plan B, if medical school doesn't work out for me, is ideally to get a job doing pretty much what I do now but in a civilian capacity.

Such a job has recently become available in a location my family and I would enjoy. If the medical school dream falls through, I could see myself doing this job until I retire. My concern, however, is that if I start this job summer 2016 and then find myself in medical school interviews fall of 2017, some people might wonder why I switched jobs if I knew I was going to be applying to medical school only a year later.

From where I sit, my reason is pretty good: No one is guaranteed admission to medical school, so I'm responsibly coming up with a Plan B. But others may disagree with how it looks.

Thoughts?

Thank you.

 

[CBFutureHelper14]

@AnotherLawyer your plan seems fine. If med doesn't work out you'll need a back up. If you are rejected from med school, do you intend to reapply for the next cycle? If you do, you'll at least be employed during your gap year. I met a guy a few weeks ago who was a civilian lawyer for a while then decided to do medicine. He is a 1st year ER Resident. How long ago did you complete your med prereqs? Have you taken the MCAT?

 

[wholeheartedly]

You have a good reason. Also keep in mind that plenty of nontrads switch jobs to take their prereqs and whatnot before applying. Switching from active duty to civilian will make sense to people.

 

[esob]

I think you will be fine. If you went from being an attorney to being a mechanical engineer or something it might seem weird, but transitioning from Active Duty to a civilian equivalent is literally about as normal as it gets for ex-military.

 

[Law2Doc]

I don't think it looks bad to Adcoms to be employed as an attorney while making the career change. However a lot depends on what is left to do for the career change. If you are going to need to take any classes, study for the mcat, build up medically related ECs as well as interview, you might find that doing these things on top of a long houred professional job is prohibitive. A lot of us in intense law jobs really had to leave in order to have time to do postbac, ECs mcat and apply. Keeping a fallback was too much of an obstacle and possibly a crutch. There's something motivating about making it a clean jump rather than trying to keep a hand on a branch.