@swim97 - Hard to say what is a sacrifice because you need a comparator. For example if you are thinking med school vs investment banking, then going to med school the salary would be a sacrifice but your hours would actually be better. Also, general job stress would happen in whatever career you pick, so I don’t view things like “stress on a Sub-I” as a sacrifice compared to the stress you’d have trying to suck up and climb the corporate or academic ladder.
With that in mind, my general thoughts on what I may have been sacrificing:
M1: didn’t feel I sacrificed much other than a salary. Still hung out good friends, traveled, explored my city, etc.
M2: salary and the stress of Step 1 is real and definitely causes some anxiety that is I think is somewhat unique no matter what other field you were gonna go into
M3: salary and I guess you sacrifice some weekends, but it’s less a sacrifice and more what you invest to get to do cool stuff and learn medicine. Also hard for me to imagine I would have taken a job where I never had to work a weekend so again it’s not exactly a sacrifice.
Gap Year: nothing - amazing hours, I was paid. Made me think maybe I should have gotten a PhD until I realized I missed seeing patients.
M4: salary and some anxiety from the match process that is unique to medicine. It was a fun year overall though - fewer responsibilities, lots of time to chill with friends, traveling all over.
Residency: work hours and lack of autonomy (over how you spend those hours, where you live, etc) are definitely a sacrifice, as is the low salary. It’s one I’m willing to make for a few years because I do genuinely feel I’m learning so much everyday, but it is not something I could or would want to do for very much longer.
Final thoughts - 1) lots of people have hobbies, start families, etc in medical school and residency, so you would not be unique by any means (doctors are people too, lol), 2) I would think about what your alternative path may be, because to know what you’d sacrifice in medicine you need to have something to compare to, and 3) the happiest doctors I know are the ones that have found their calling in medicine (or, honestly, just wanted to be rich and have a lot of social capital and went into very high paying specialties and work in private practice, but we’ll leave that aside for now), so I would just remind you that if you think you’d love medicine (after shadowing, talking to docs about their lives, talking to patients, etc) then the sacrifices are more investments than anything.