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[Schadret]

You would of been off as a comp sci major making 100-150 k at 22 years of age with zero debt

This is very much the exception, not the rule. For every 22 year old fresh graduate with no debt and a 100k+ job there are prob well over a hundred (or a thousand to be honest) with student loans and a 40-50k job.

I interview and hire tech folks at my company and we're not hiring anyone fresh out of college for 100-150k. The Googles and Facebooks of the world only employ a small percentage of comp sci graduates.

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[deleted804295]

I'm really sorry for what you went through but blaming the system for your miseries will not get your life together.

The grass is always greener on the other side and while it's easy to say "don't go into medicine" all other careers that work at the level of medicine ie. tech, engineering, banking, law require the same amount of exhaustion, time, and effort. Unlike these other avenues, medicine happens to be the most secure of these fields.

The focus for students going into medicine and currently in medicine is not to focus on some future goal for happiness. We will always have future goals. We seriously need to take the time to enjoy life right now. As time progresses we will only have more responsibilities and less free time. It's up to every single one of us to manage our time to be happy with life.

I really hope you take these words into consideration. Enjoy your life right now. Go on some speed dates in person. Ask friends of friends if they can recommend you someone to date. Go out golfing or to sports bars with friends. Don't blame your sadness on the system.

 

[OfMiceAndWomen]

I see you are an MD applicant. That's fine.

Go through 4 years of school, 4 years of 80+ hour residencies, 2 years of fellowship...and you will have the delayed gratification envy start to build. See all your social media friends who did comp sci/pa/nursing travel the world and experience "life"...and you will be spending money.

See your colleagues that are a bit ahead of you driving the nice cars and whatnot- and you be tempted to also get a porsche.

It's easy to say this now that you aren't going to be like that- but a decade of hard studying, delayed gratification, and comparison to friends in other fields will tempt you to keep up with the Jones once you start making money.

I think this realization that your peers are gonna have a better time than you is already prevalent toward the end of college, with friends getting jobs in consulting, finance, or CS and having more income than you’ll have for the next 10 years. I have a friend who is paying for a Tesla in full with his signing bonus at Facebook... while I’ll be making 30k next year as an RA. It has at times been hard to grapple with stuff like this, but I took my job because there’s nothing else I want to do more than work as a physician. The financial and time investment in medicine is something that definitely shouldn’t be taken lightly. I know are lot of us young’uns are very idealistic and glossy-eyed, because we haven’t gone through the full extent of medical education and training. But trust that we’re already thinking long and hard if this path is worth it and if we’re cut out for it.

 

[deleted962973]

This is very much the exception, not the rule. For every 22 year old fresh graduate with no debt and a 100k+ job there are prob well over a hundred (or a thousand to be honest) with student loans and a 40-50k job.

I interview and hire tech folks at my company and we're not hiring anyone fresh out of college for 100-150k. The Googles and Facebooks of the world only employ a small percentage of comp sci graduates.

!!!!!! Exactly what I mean by out of touch. It’s really not that easy to get an 80K/year job straight out of college. The almost guaranteed employment that comes with an MD doesn’t exist in any other field.

I also really wonder why OP, given that he’s not tied down with wife and family, doesn’t leave his employer for another. He admits that they’re underpaying him and backed out of making him partner, so why stay?

 

[deleted804295]

!!!!!! Exactly what I mean by out of touch. It’s really not that easy to get an 80K/year job straight out of college

Exactly. All of my older friends who recently graduated were unemployed for around 6 months straight out of college. After they got jobs they made around $35-50k.

It's ridiculous that people expect to make $80-100k straight out of college. These are the sorts of salaries that grown people in their 50s with masters/PhDs make. The entitlement for people to think they should make this fresh out of college when everyone has a college degree nowadays makes no sense to me.

 

[Bonne Nuit]

For the physicians who regret medicine: were any of you career changers? How do you feel about your former career vs. medicine? Would you go back?

My former industry had a serious ethics problem. It was not limited to my company, it was an overwhelmingly toxic culture, and women and minorities bore the brunt of the bad behavior. I won't go into too much detail, but I'll say I worked for/with people who took great pride - found it amusing, even - to toe the line of legality and ethical behavior. Two coworkers committed suicide in the years I was in the field.

It was easy to make good money though, I'll give it that.

The day I left the industry was one of the happiest of my life. I'm not young, I don't think I'm being naive; I cannot imagine any profession, no matter how heavy/stressful the workload, being as soul-crushing as the one in which I used to work. I actively felt bad about who I was as a person the entire time I was in that career. Do you guys feel the same about medicine?

 

[On_The_Way_Up]

Something that keeps getting thrown out is “going into medicine for the right reasons”. It’s entirely possible that folks go into it with the best intentions but the reality of modern medicine kicks in and you feel taken advantage of. Working one’s ass off for the better part of a couple decades while taking on massive debt from a school that does not provide nearly the value for what they charge and then working for $12/hr with little free time as a junior resident and waiting until mid 30s before a fair paycheck does cause the money aspect to get emphasized. It’s unfortunate really but the massive opportunity cost and financial investment that medicine entails is too sizable and can easily lead to a shift in values, especially when you see less capable peers working half as hard for a nice life. So it’s not entirely unreasonable to feel like Dr. Jim and many who actually practice medicine resonate with his sentiment, which is why if you talk to a handful of physicians many will actively try to stop you from going into medicine. Maybe that wouldn’t be the case if the profession hadn’t eroded into a depersonalized, thankless job. Patients rarely give a sincere thank you, have ridiculous expectations, mid level encroachment, threat of lawsuit, non-stop paperwork, insurance denials, increasingly corporate etc etc. The trust in physicians has been dwindling too, many think we are greedy and/or inept. These factors alone drive many into radiology because clinical medicine has gotten so bad and yet that isn’t safe from issues either. There’s no way in hell I’d recommend going to med school, but no pre-med will take that to heart until they’ve put in 1000s of hours, plenty of $$$, and wear the golden handcuffs. Caveat Emptor

Good points. I think its important that premeds understand the potential downfalls to being a doctor and the delayed gratification that comes with it. One of the doctors I shadowed half the time tried to talk me out of going to med school and becoming a doctor. Another doctor likes what she does but has some dissatisfactions with the job. This isn't for everyone so people need to be sure this is what they want to do. And if the above happens will they still be happy in this profession.

 

[JustAUser]

Exactly. All of my older friends who recently graduated were unemployed for around 6 months straight out of college. After they got jobs they made around $35-50k.

It's ridiculous that people expect to make $80-100k straight out of college. These are the sorts of salaries that grown people in their 50s with masters/PhDs make. The entitlement for people to think they should make this fresh out of college when everyone has a college degree nowadays makes no sense to me.

I go to a state school (so salaries are public), and sadly, many of my profs make about 50k. You have to go into administration or do research to make more. Even after you get a PhD, it doesn't guarantee you a job or a decent salary the same way an MD does.

 

[Laradd]

what field did you go in?

 

[noddy1234]

You've had a bad experience in medicine,I feel for you and that's sad. So now you're trying to convince people not to go into Medicine? If no one goes into medicine then we have no doctors. If you were sick and needed a doctor where would you go? Don't understand this. I empathize with your pain. But trying to convince people to not go into medicine (based on your own experience) is just wrong. There are plenty of MDs that love their careers through the ups and downs.

 

[Med Ed]

As for my financial situation. I have paid off my loans. I had saved money to buy into the partnership I was expecting to join, then was denied partnership. I subsequently made a few bad investments which lost over 50% of value. Note my salary has been around the 300k range for the last 10 years which is low for radiology, but that’s when you get when you join a practice.

So financially I have made a few bad decisions. But I am currently living paycheck to paycheck. I have no debt and no alimony or child support (no kids, never married).

As I am more or less broke, I’m in no position to be giving advice about how to handle money.

Jesus H.

Get a job at a VA in a state with no income tax. If you like the location buy a modest house with at least 20% down and a conventional 15-year mortgage. Max out pre-tax contributions to an index fund through Vanguard. Load up a backdoor IRA annually but don't take the deduction. Don't bother with a side hustle, if you stay single and childless you'll end up with enough cash to afford a beach house and all the Mai Tais/Viagra you could ever want.

Spend the next 23 years making smarter decisions you might not hate your career choice so much.

 

[CyrilFiggis]

Haven't read all the comments, but anyone else notice how OPs post is littered with pointing out his superlatives - Top 20 undergrad, honors programs, MCAT score (which at the time was high), 25% of class, 10+ articles, conference awards, partnership track. OPs was driven by what was presumed to be the value of this success... "If I'm successful and one of the best = happy"

He also went straight through from undergrad, having been accepted as a junior. He's had no free time away from this mission. He's been grinding for 20 years. You wonder why he burnt out? You wonder why others burn out? They bust their ass, are high achievers and then enter a system that is far from the ideal they imagined. That can be toxic.

If anyone actually reads this, don't listen to OP and not go in to medicine. Instead, take a gap year or 3. Live life after college. Explore. Fall in love. Make mistakes. I started med school at 30. I'm happily married with a family who love and support what I do. I worked the 70 hour/week corporate life and saw the BS that goes along with any profession. By the time I finish residency, I'll still have 30 years of medicine to practice. So don't rush.

 

[vanillamilkshake]

Haven't read all the comments, but anyone else notice how OPs post is littered with pointing out his superlatives - Top 20 undergrad, honors programs, MCAT score (which at the time was high), 25% of class, 10+ articles, conference awards, partnership track. OPs was driven by what was presumed to be the value of this success... "If I'm successful and one of the best = happy"

He also went straight through from undergrad, having been accepted as a junior. He's had no free time away from this mission. He's been grinding for 20 years. You wonder why he burnt out? You wonder why others burn out? They bust their ass, are high achievers and then enter a system that is far from the ideal they imagined. That can be toxic.

If anyone actually reads this, don't listen to OP and not go in to medicine. Instead, take a gap year or 3. Live life after college. Explore. Fall in love. Make mistakes. I started med school at 30. I'm happily married with a family who love and support what I do. I worked the 70 hour/week corporate life and saw the BS that goes along with any profession. By the time I finish residency, I'll still have 30 years of medicine to practice. So don't rush.

This resonates with me. I've just finished junior year and I have friends who have just gotten in to medical school, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the least bit envious of them. As for me, I just withdrew my app for my senior year cycle, so I'll be a nontrad by the time I get in, but I'm starting to think that's not such a bad thing. Like you said, I think taking time to mature and live life will be worth it, I have my whole life to be a physician after that.

 

[Shunsui]

n=1

 

[differentiating]

I'm really sorry for what you went through but blaming the system for your miseries will not get your life together.

The grass is always greener on the other side and while it's easy to say "don't go into medicine" all other careers that work at the level of medicine ie. tech, engineering, banking, law require the same amount of exhaustion, time, and effort. Unlike these other avenues, medicine happens to be the most secure of these fields.

The focus for students going into medicine and currently in medicine is not to focus on some future goal for happiness. We will always have future goals. We seriously need to take the time to enjoy life right now. As time progresses we will only have more responsibilities and less free time. It's up to every single one of us to manage our time to be happy with life.

I really hope you take these words into consideration. Enjoy your life right now. Go on some speed dates in person. Ask friends of friends if they can recommend you someone to date. Go out golfing or to sports bars with friends. Don't blame your sadness on the system.

To emphasize this - my brother is in tech. I'm sometimes jealous of the amount of money he makes, no lie, but he's on call too - in fact, last Christmas I was the one off while he was having to field calls related to their system being down. He has to work for that money; it's not the kind of job that just anyone could have, including those in medicine. Investment banking is similar, based on a college friend's experience.

Haven't read all the comments, but anyone else notice how OPs post is littered with pointing out his superlatives - Top 20 undergrad, honors programs, MCAT score (which at the time was high), 25% of class, 10+ articles, conference awards, partnership track. OPs was driven by what was presumed to be the value of this success... "If I'm successful and one of the best = happy"

He also went straight through from undergrad, having been accepted as a junior. He's had no free time away from this mission. He's been grinding for 20 years. You wonder why he burnt out? You wonder why others burn out? They bust their ass, are high achievers and then enter a system that is far from the ideal they imagined. That can be toxic.

If anyone actually reads this, don't listen to OP and not go in to medicine. Instead, take a gap year or 3. Live life after college. Explore. Fall in love. Make mistakes. I started med school at 30. I'm happily married with a family who love and support what I do. I worked the 70 hour/week corporate life and saw the BS that goes along with any profession. By the time I finish residency, I'll still have 30 years of medicine to practice. So don't rush.

I don't think gap years are by any means necessary to enjoy medicine - people should take them if they want to, but you can still love what you're doing and learning without it. I don't know what I would have done with a gap year, and it probably would have stressed me out more, which were factors in my decision to go straight through. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Moko]

I just withdrew my app for my senior year cycle, so I'll be a nontrad by the time I get in

You'll still be a "traditional" applicant with year(s) to spare before you would be considered "non-trad" . Most people don't go straight through, and gap years are becoming increasingly common

 

[Moose A Moose]

It’s all true. Choose to ignore me but that’s your prerogative. Regarding partnership, medicine is mostly corporate nowadays so partnership is less common. However the hierarchy in medicine is the same, corporate or private.

I chose to ignore your first post after I read, “top 20 school”. Lol, smfh... you really aren’t too far removed from SDN at 42 yo, are you?

 

[NITRAS]

I’m sorry, I work hard, but I like my life as an attending way more than college, med school, or residency.

Part of me thinks that radiology is so segregated from the rest of medicine combined with the increased expectation of production with technological advancements....no way I’d choose radiology.

The OP is only 42 with training in IM no less, I’d seriously consider career change.