What the Heck is So Good about S.....

[LeNeurologue]

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What's So Good About Specializing in Radiology.
I'm 13 and want to pick a career.

I've been thinking from being a CT Surgeon or General Surgeon.
But I've been hearing that many people are ditching surgery and shooting for lower weekly working hours and good pay and those people are choosing radiology.

What exactly does a radiologist do?
Do Radiologists do tedious work?
What might a Radiologist get fired for?

I've read a thread about some radiologist making 800k from a solo practice in the midwest.
What is a solo practice exactly? Is it like a private practice, because I thought radiologists just do stuff for hospitals.

I'm sorry if these questions have already been answered.

 

[werewethere]

13, huh? IF that's the case, perhaps you should decide on what high school and college you should go to first, and maybe even figure out if you really want to be and can be a good doctor before asking these more specific, rather inflammatory, questions.

 

[f_w]

troll-o-meter
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[LeNeurologue]

13, huh? IF that's the case, perhaps you should decide on what high school and college you should go to first, and maybe even figure out if you really want to be and can be a good doctor before asking these more specific, rather inflammatory, questions.

Wow. You people are so nice. 😉

I'm in the eleventh grade. So I'm already in high school. I've been thinking about University of South Carolina. And Yes, I really want to be a doctor. If I wasn't why would I even bother posting here? With the proper training and determination I'm sure I could be a good doctor.

 

[hans19]

I'm sure you can be a good doctor, all in due time. Its fine to dream, but thats still almost 10 years away. Concentrate on enjoying your youth and hanging out with people your own age, this is an integral part of your life when you need to develop your social skills. Thats something I would tell any 11th grader, but its especially directed to you. The people I've met from advanced pathways, even in adulthood, tended to be awkward in their social interactions and a lot of times just plain weird. Don't let that happen to you. Enjoy being a kid-- your life will get so much more complicated as you get older.

 

[ericdopt]

13?
11th grade?
This does not add up, unless you skipped a couple of grades. I was 16-17 in 11th grade.

And just remember, don't believe everything you read. Especially about salaries. My program director had a great quote: "you earn what you make." Trust me, even if there is a job that pays $800K (doubtful). You'd be working so hard that you would drop dead of a heart attack before you could enjoy the money.

Do NOT go into any specialty for the money. It ain't worth the aggrevation if you hate what you do.

 

[DrPunk]

Hans, I completely disagree with you on the generalizations that people from advanced direct paths to MD i.e 6/or 7 year programs are awkward and are socially inept. I come from one of those schools, if anything you must step up your game to deal with those older than you... we get the same board scores, same residencies, same jobs... we're just a couple of years or more younger. If someone is not mature enough after delivering babies, doing 24 hour calls, being in the OR, the ER, or on countless number of rounds, and going through All 3 steps... then nothing they would have done before medical school would have matured them.

I had some idiot interviewer at a prelim say the very same thing right as we sat down to interview..."i knew someone from a accelerated program...blah blah..." Going through one of those programs shows dedication, and extreme self control, while your buddies are out partying it up. Trust me you develop social skills and you find time to chill when there are over 100 of the same students in 1 class going through the same exact thing.

granted there are those younguns who do not deserve to be doctors.... they weed themselves out, because they cant handle it or dont have the above mentioned dedication.

rant over...
now, im just getting through this medicine year, so my wife, whom I met in med school btw, and I can start radiology, together...

 

[billclinton]

Hans, I completely disagree with you on the generalizations that people from advanced direct paths to MD i.e 6/or 7 year programs are awkward and are socially inept. I come from one of those schools, if anything you must step up your game to deal with those older than you... we get the same board scores, same residencies, same jobs... we're just a couple of years or more younger. If someone is not mature enough after delivering babies, doing 24 hour calls, being in the OR, the ER, or on countless number of rounds, and going through All 3 steps... then nothing they would have done before medical school would have matured them.

I had some idiot interviewer at a prelim say the very same thing right as we sat down to interview..."i knew someone from a accelerated program...blah blah..." Going through one of those programs shows dedication, and extreme self control, while your buddies are out partying it up. Trust me you develop social skills and you find time to chill when there are over 100 of the same students in 1 class going through the same exact thing.

granted there are those younguns who do not deserve to be doctors.... they weed themselves out, because they cant handle it or dont have the above mentioned dedication.

rant over...
now, im just getting through this medicine year, so my wife, whom I met in med school btw, and I can start radiology, together...

while you may certainly be an exception, i don't think you understand what hans was saying...
being smart, intelligent, passing tests, delivering babies, working in the ER, having self-control. being able to do anything medical
DOES NOT EQUAL
having social skills or not being "weird"

probably having grown up with a 100+ people like yourself would make you even more "weird" and unable to relate to the common everyday person. However, this does mean you can't score a 300 on the usmle or deliver 10 babies with your right thumb...

(so just to clarify i am not specifically saying this about you, as i do not even know you!)

 

[hans19]

Hans, I completely disagree with you on the generalizations that people from advanced direct paths to MD i.e 6/or 7 year programs are awkward and are socially inept.

My apologies, if I offend. My point is simply not to indulge academic/professional advancement, for its own sake, at the expense of adolescence. You only get to be a kid once. Sure he's the king of pop, but look what happened to Michael Jackson! 😱.

Don't put the cart before the ox.

 

[Docxter]

Despite the fact that many of us consider ourselves quite smart (at least academically) and certainly have been around many many smart people by virtue of where we went to school or trained, for many of us, our focus on our academic achievement and the quest for getting to where we are, has certainly taken time away from many other activities and interactions that other people have engaged themselves in. The more time we have put in academic activities over the years, or the more advanced placement courses we have taken, the less time we have spent on other activities, and the likelihood of having some explicit or implicit "deficit" in other aspects of our life increases, and this is true regardless of how smart you, your parents, or your teachers think you are. I totally agree with billclinton's post above. I was considered a so-called "super high achiever" myself, but now that I have grown older, I realize that there are certain aspects of life that I didn't pay attention to or didn't have time to focus on, and wish that I had. Not that I am unhappy with what I did or where I am, but I am just being fair. A person is much more than an IQ score. He or she is a multidimensional personality who needs to value all innate and learnable qualities, even the ones that are never evaluated on a formal test. No matter what you focus on, a person's abilities are limited; the more you focus on certain aspects of life, the more you lose out on others. Everybody has to sacrifice something.

BTW, I have yet to see a person who has a claim or history along the lines ..."youngest graduate of ...(fill in the blanks)" and is not weird in a lot of aspects, though it may not be obvious to themselves, or their parents.

And DrPunk, I beg to differ that "delivering babies, doing 24 hour calls, being in the OR, the ER, or on countless number of rounds, and going through All 3 steps" defines maturity. It may define academic achievement or hardworking person, but not maturity. There may be some correlation, but far from perfect. Hate to say it, but even thinking that these things will define maturity is itself a sign of immaturity, unless you and I have quite disparate opinions as to what maturity means.

 

[billclinton]

Despite the fact that many of us consider ourselves quite smart (at least academically) and certainly have been around many many smart people by virtue of where we went to school or trained, for many of us, our focus on our academic achievement and the quest for getting to where we are, has certainly taken time away from many other activities and interactions that other people have engaged themselves in. The more time we have put in academic activities over the years, or the more advanced placement courses we have taken, the less time we have spent on other activities, and the likelihood of having some explicit or implicit "deficit" in other aspects of our life increases, and this is true regardless of how smart you, your parents, or your teachers think you are. I totally agree with billclinton's post above. I was considered a so-called "super high achiever" myself, but now that I have grown older, I realize that there are certain aspects of life that I didn't pay attention to or didn't have time to focus on, and wish that I had. Not that I am unhappy with what I did or where I am, but I am just being fair. A person is much more than an IQ score. He or she is a multidimensional personality who needs to value all innate and learnable qualities, even the ones that are never evaluated on a formal test. No matter what you focus on, a person's abilities are limited; the more you focus on certain aspects of life, the more you lose out on others. Everybody has to sacrifice something.

BTW, I have yet to see a person who has a claim or history along the lines ..."youngest graduate of ...(fill in the blanks)" and is not weird in a lot of aspects, though it may not be obvious to themselves, or their parents.

And DrPunk, I beg to differ that "delivering babies, doing 24 hour calls, being in the OR, the ER, or on countless number of rounds, and going through All 3 steps" defines maturity. It may define academic achievement or hardworking person, but not maturity. There may be some correlation, but far from perfect. Hate to say it, but even thinking that these things will define maturity is itself a sign of immaturity, unless you and I have quite disparate opinions as to what maturity means.

this is exatly what i was hinting at.. but better put!

 

[DrPunk]

The bottomline is your view is pure speculation on how immature these students "should" be. Also, I beg to differ, the above mentioned experiences do involve maturity in how you handle each of those difficult situations, i.e. the art of conversation, friendliness, relating to your colleagues, interacting with nurses, patients, their families etc.

Also, what you define as maturity really just sounds like being well rounded
The reality, with a 6 year program for instance, is there are 2 years of undergraduate schooling before 4 years of medical school, with electives and options in majoring in things such as spanish, philosophy, journalism, english... etc as many have done... plenty of time to read recreationally, continue hobbies, draw, paint, join college school bands, college track and field or the soccer team, join various interest groups/ student organizations, travel to developing nations with humanitarian groups, hold down part time jobs, develop relationships, marry and live the trials and tribulations of life. As far as loss of adolesence, plenty of time to join frats and sororities, go to your college homecoming, college bball and football games, video-games etc. Trust me when I say there is plenty of time to experience life, travel and "grow as a person". much of this continues as you enter medical school.

Unfortunately, it is your speculations and over-generalizations that are immature.

 

[CoreyShaw]

Im am currently attending college amd hoping to major in radiology. Not trying to discourage you at all, but at 13, your career choices are probably going to change a few more times before you reach college. But if in fact you do stick with it and decide to go into radiology, I encourage that...its the field of the future. When talking about wages, there are two ways you can go. First, you can go to your local community college and get an associates degree in Radiography and go get a job at a local hospital or doctors office, probably making between $35,000 and $55,000. OR you can go the other route and do a few more years in school and a few more thousand dollars, and you can go to med school to become an actual radiologist (as apposed to a tech, which you would be with an associates.). Radiologists make the BIG BUCKS! Around $300,000 a year! But all of your hours and your wages depend on where you work, hospitals and private practices are two different worlds. I am trying to decide whether I want to go to med school at this point or not. And the medical classes you take are very interesting as well. Im only in my first year and Im taking Medical Terminology. I love it, I have it in about 4 hours and Im stoked. And one more thing! Another good thing about radiology is there is SO MUCH you can specialize in. X-rays, ultra-sound, MRI, CT Scans, etc. etc. So you have plenty of time to think about this..take your time.

 

[eavanes]

it's unfortunate that we are all so conforming that we cannot see things in a different way. i briefly browsed through the replies to our aspiring 13-year old and there was never a genuine attempt to advise this young man/woman. you have all gone through the maturation process you hold in such esteem, but not one of you has come full circle and realized in the end we are all immature.

to the original poster (OP), many of the things you are hearing are true. i used to be a kid a long time ago, and it was so much fun. at 13, i loved to play basketball and watch tv. guess what? i still love to play basketball and watch tv, but the only problem is that there are so many more responsibilities hanging over my head that it becomes difficult to do my favored activities as much.

now, if you realize that you are not going to be a kid again, and you feel like you have gotten your fair share of being a kid, then by all means go right ahead plow on. one could argue that 18 years of being a kid is enough. i don't think 100 years of being a kid is enough. so it's all relative.

one thing we are not used to here is getting to our future career in a timely fashion. in most other countries, people pick a career after 10 years of secondary education and spend the following time pursuing that career. that way, they're not 40 by the time they reach their chosen career path.

 

[nutcancer]

Wow...only in America is doing medicine in 6 years considered weird. Do people realize in every other country in the world medicine is completed 6-7 years after high school?