@Marian, I do not think they have made an “inferior” choice; it was just a different choice.
In general, my point is that different students with different interests and capabilities, who have a different support from their family or a “chance encounter” with a good mentor, may choose other career paths. The more capable they are (due to various reasons, including the opportunity that their college and/or family could provide for them), they may have more non-medical-school doors open for them - thus they could choose other career paths in the end.
The example I referred to (2 out of 4 who started premed and continued this path to the end) is just a single data point, of course. Likely coincidentally, the one among these 4 students with the “best” family support switched out of the premed track first (I heard he did not like being in the lab and writing lab report - he has the leadership type of personality, as I heard). The two who continued on this track were the “weakest” among the six suitemates in term of financial resources, family supports and SES of the family. (for example, parent’s jobs are low-level government employees or nurses. BTW, this particular family produced two doctors both in very competitive specialties too (their family has only two children) in the end - not bad for a family with a limited household income but I bet they must have been loaded with HUGE amount of student loans.) The two who decided not to be a premed at the beginning of the freshman year are from the wealthiest family - maybe working grueling hours for another 8 years after college does not appeal to this segment of student population. Who knows! (Not out of jealousy, DS once said such students from a wealthy family, after their graduation, could live anywhere in the world, do any job and still enjoy a life without any worry about the money. They are good kids too, but they tend to have much more choices in their life.)
Lawyers and bankers work hours that are just as if not more grueling. Granted, they do get paid well (though in per hour terms. . . eh). However, their career fields are much less stable and more risky than medicine.
I really don’t think any lawyer or banker I know works my husband’s hours as an OB-gyn in solo practice. 24/7, constant midnight phone calls, and people’s lives on the line (like the shoulder dystocia of a few nights ago). That doesn’t make medicine a better or worse choice than any other, but it’s different. Having to pay six figures off the top in malpractice is qualitatively different too. There’s a physicality to it as well.
@Pizzagirl Wow, and I thought our pediatrician was daring as a solo. When we interviewed him–now years ago–we asked him, What happens if there’s something urgent and you’re on vacation? “I don’t take vacations.”
I’m going to have to go looking. I live in NY suburbs and I thought I noticed college stickers and not in an area so tony that people would be embarassed by a SUNY sticker. I’ll have to keep my eye out!
I’m very relieved that isn’t the reaction, I get all to much of that with my own alma mater. My kids go to pretty well known colleges, but not the Ivy League, or football or basketball colleges.
All I can say, is that I’m relieved that my next-door neighbors aren’t the school sticker types. Their kids went to Stanford, Princeton and Yale. How do you compete with that??? My normal-thank-you kids certainly couldn’t!
@Pizzagirl, I agree that the risk of losing a life (as opposed to a job) is a different level of stress. Also about the physical aspect (for some doctors).
Most torturous career out there? That’s a stretch of the imagination. My neighbor the hospitalist would laugh heartily at that characterization. Clocks in, clocks out, on call one weekend every 8 weeks. Works much less than I do in a corporate job and never travels except to a conference at a luxury resort (i.e. no midweek trips to Cleveland or Dallas on a day when the computers at United go down and the entire air system is in chaos).
You guys often describe medicine in very 1962 “Dr. Kildare” terms. But I still think Pizza’s husband rocks… and he is surely atypical these days of the way most OB/GYN’s manage their patients and practices!!!
I was a biology major in college, although I didn’t plan to become a doctor. But as I reached my sophomore and junior years, friends began to suggest that I should think about becoming a doctor because my grades were high enough so that I had a realistic chance of getting in to medical school. But I vetoed the idea because I didn’t want to be responsible for people’s lives and because I don’t function well if I don’t get enough sleep.
Then I became a parent, and suddenly I was getting very little sleep and I was responsible for the lives of little people who seemed to have compelling desires to run into traffic and stuff random objects in their mouths.
Maybe I should have thought a bit more about my choices in life.
There is no harder and riskier job than a job of a parent. None compare to parental responsibilities!!
If everybody was calculating that much, we would not have doctors. Decision should be made on assessing your ability (that is correct), but also assessing your passion for doing certain thing over and over. NOBODY operates well if they do not get enough sleep, if they are on their feet for 15 hours, if they did not have a chance to visit a bathroom when they needed. There are other physical, emotional, intellectual boundaries that are basically breached in Medical student and MD life. But again, none are compared to the limits that parenthood is pushing all of us.
It’s very atypical, blossom. He’s been solo for 2 years and it’s not sustainable long term. He did manage to finagle coverage for D’s graduation weekend but no real vacations for the immediate future.
@mathmom: You didn’t just say that! Whatever your alma mater is, that kind of reaction never happens in real life. They are just fantasies of some people “only on CC”.
As for whether medicine is “the most torturous career”, I think as with some career tracks, the junior level associates have it hard. In medicine, it’s the medical school years and residency - low pay, long hours etc. in banking it’s the junior associates. In corporate world, however, it seems the opposite. The low level worker have a 9-5 job while as one progresses to higher level and takes more responsibilities ESP when they reach SVP and CEO, the grueling starts. Of course, there are some jobs that are stressful in nature and never get easier. For example, a heart surgeon or a fire firefighter (very different skill sets are required but nonetheless both are stressful).
Pizza, my GYN is solo after many years of a group practice. He just gave up OB to the chagrin of his patients of child-bearing age (obviously I am not among them!). The only OB’s in my neck of the woods are in huge multi-practitioner groups which include the full range of related doc’s- endocrinology, gynecological oncology, radiology, etc. I don’t know what the patient experience is like (other than getting easy referrals when you have a problem which I’m sure is quite comforting) but it is a much better quality of life for the doc’s- coverage, on-calls, lower premiums for malpractice due to huge negotiating power of the large physician-management groups, etc.
But for folks who graduated from med school in the 1970’s and early 80’s who aren’t ready to retire, it sure is a different way of providing patient care for sure.
Pan- there are studies done that seem to indicate that the most stressful careers correlate with the LEAST amount of education. Being an EMT is more stressful than being a dermatologist. Being a firefighter is more stressful than being a radiologist. Not every physician encounters daily stressors.
And air traffic control, law enforcement, even infantry/enlisted military personnel register significantly higher levels of stress than surgeons and ER docs, contrary to what you would believe by reading CC. Doctors have very high levels of drug abuse, for example- which epidemiologists believe results from constant access- not necessarily from high levels of on the job stress. But active duty military and recent vets have very high levels of suicide, controlled for age and other demographics.
One of my children took some gap time and worked as an EMT. He was physically assaulted a number of times, including one time where a gun was pointed at him. He spends a lot of time at the gym (and looks it), which has the good news / bad news effect of making him capable of defending himself but also makes him the target for misplaced machismo at the scene.
We live in NY, too, in an area where many kids attend SUNYs. The reason we don’t put stickers on our cars has nothing to do with how we feel about our schools. It does, however, have quite a lot to do with how we feel about our cars.
Ha, blossom! A lot of it is his own doing. Even when he did have a partner, he would promise specific patients he’d deliver them. Now he basically promises everybody - because he will! They get concierge level service and they don’t pay concierge level prices.
I couldn’t even find a Tufts bumper sticker, they only had window films (which doesn’t hurt your car), but also doesn’t show up if you have tinted windows. I feel badly about only advertising S1’s school. As for are cars, what can I say? One is a 2002, the other a 2004 Toyota.
Our cars are nothing special either but I’m not a fan of putting any kind of sticker on them for any purpose. When I’ve been required to have parking stickers on my windshield at work, I left the protection on and just taped them to the inside so they could be easily removed. I just don’t want to ruin a car for no good reason!
Pizzagirl, IME, film decals that go on windows don’t damage the glass. A razor blade takes them off cleanly. A razor blade will also take off the inspection sticker without damage, even though they use an adhesive that is much stronger.
Bumper stickers or stickers on the painted portion of a car are another matter entirely.
