Perspective on Starting a Career in Medicine
I am almost 30 years old, but I still haven’t had my first “real job” yet.
I want to be clear, I do earn an income as a Resident and I definitely work enough hours for it to classify as a job, but because residency is a formal continuation of the education process(an apprenticeship basically) I don’t want to call it my “real job” just yet.
One of the quirks about a career in medicine is that, by the time most of your friends have switched jobs a couple of times , been laid off once or twice or decide to go back to school, you will be getting ready to start your career.
I realize that by the time I finish my training I will have spent half over half of my working life just getting ready for the show.
This prolonged education has some obvious effects on your finances. The one that always gets the headlines is the six-figure debt a large number of us accumulate in the process of completing our degree.
It is easy to focus on this negative number and the relatively late start to a career and blow it out of proportion while ignoring the positives of pursuing a satisfying career.
The parallel question in the business sector seems to be whether it is financially worth it to go back to school for an MBA. Other bloggers have mulled over this question before.
- Franky is leaning on not going back for his MBA here
- On workthing 5 people share their perspective retrospectively and all seem to think it is worth it
As one of my attending physicians once told me: “its rare that you will look back and regret being as educated as you are.” With that perspective, it probably is worth it, IF you can afford the time.
Nothing earth shattering here, just a thought as I approach 30 and eventually my first real Job.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:12 am
ha! your attending probably didn’t graduate with 100k in debt.
does he/she even know you well enough to comment?
my wife and i certainly have a great deal of regrets about spending that time educating ourselves. certainly some of it was necessary and good and allow us to have a rewarding job and nice lifestyle, but some was certainly a waste of time.
we have well over 200k in educational loans. we have a 30 year payoff. same payment every month for the entire duration. we write a check (electronically) for over 2k a month (required amount). my children would be out of college before we finished paying our loans, if we did not choose to accelerate and pay even more. i don’t think people understand how badly it affects you to be so in debt mentally your entire life, even if you are technically earning a good income. as for paying it off early, yes that makes sense to a degree but so does stuffing money into retirement, paying off house, and we choose to put money into children’s college fund first. disability insurance, life insurance, umbrella coverage, rainy day fund. money in case we ever switch jobs-the last time we switched, despite never having been sued we had to pay almost $100k for tail insurance out of pocket. still, we are not poor, but i feel like i am ceo of my own large corporation at times.
ymmv
February 6th, 2008 at 12:21 am
All I can say is I am not burnt out yet basically b/c from my view the race hasn’t even begun I do realize that it will be quite an uphill journey, your story is very similar all over Medicine and is sort of the premise of this blog.
It is interesting to hear that some of your time spent may have been over educating yourselves. Is that because some of the felllowships didn’t add value, diversity or open new doors of opportunity?
We assume a large amount of debt under the illusion that we can make it evaporate quickly as soon as we get a “real Job” Eventually we realize that 30 years of payments is a long time to be beholden to someone else and that the only guys who are going to retire early are the ones pushing the money around and charging 3% for their “services”
We shall see what I eventually decide to do with my loans, the majority are consolidated at less than 3% which is pretty cheap money. However, I haven’t had to start writing them a check and I have the feeling that I would rather just pay them off ASAP rather than seeking a higher return.
I am just glad I don’t have to make the decision tonight!!