Yeah, so . . . I'm 25, in the second half of my 3rd year of medical school . . . . and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. You might think, "Your going to be a doctor, you've already made the hard decisions!" Wrong. The number and variety of jobs avalable to MD's is incredible. I know MD's that work anywhere from 40 hours/week to consistently over 110 hours a week. Ones that make 80k and others that make well over 600k.
I want to be a husband to my wife (and a father when I have children). I'd be lying to you if I said money wasn't important, but it is less important. My wife is a professional saver (only to be topped by my mother in law). I'm going to be fine financially, more so than many of my collegues who are probably going to make much more. (its one of those spending much less than you make kind of thing). I may not be able to afford the huge hunting ranch
, but maybe a smaller one.
I have interest in Neurology (more of a medicine area) and Othopedics (aint no medicine here. hammers and nails). I think I might like PM&R (a less known specialty that involves anything from pain managment to stroke rehabilitation but havn't worked directly with any physiatrists.
First two years of medical schools are largly didactic. Starting. Very limited clinical experience. Third year (this year) is where you start your clincal immersion. I feel like they didn't teach us much those first two years (they taught us a lot, its just no one tells you so much about the medical profession. Like the hiarchical structure (3rd years are at the bottom, btw), the difference between good nurses and terrible nurses, the difference between an IJ and an EJ, and the importance of putting everyone on Vanc and Zosyn (inside joke. . .sorry).
Then you look at competativeness. Residency programs largely use the STEP scores, exams full of obscure and largely unimportant clinical data that have little ability in predicting clinical abilities to create a bell curve out of a group of largely very motivated and intelligent people. The number of US medical students as increased dramatically pretty recently. Residency programs have not, which has made them much more competative, particularly in surgical subspecialties (like ortho).
long story short, I've gone through most of my third year, I have to decide very soon what I want to do with the rest of my life. Nothing I have done has given me any "ahah! moments." The rest of 3rd year is going to be very busy and I really don't have much, if any time to look at other specialties before I have to make decisions.
I want to be a husband to my wife (and a father when I have children). I'd be lying to you if I said money wasn't important, but it is less important. My wife is a professional saver (only to be topped by my mother in law). I'm going to be fine financially, more so than many of my collegues who are probably going to make much more. (its one of those spending much less than you make kind of thing). I may not be able to afford the huge hunting ranch
, but maybe a smaller one. I have interest in Neurology (more of a medicine area) and Othopedics (aint no medicine here. hammers and nails). I think I might like PM&R (a less known specialty that involves anything from pain managment to stroke rehabilitation but havn't worked directly with any physiatrists.
First two years of medical schools are largly didactic. Starting. Very limited clinical experience. Third year (this year) is where you start your clincal immersion. I feel like they didn't teach us much those first two years (they taught us a lot, its just no one tells you so much about the medical profession. Like the hiarchical structure (3rd years are at the bottom, btw), the difference between good nurses and terrible nurses, the difference between an IJ and an EJ, and the importance of putting everyone on Vanc and Zosyn (inside joke. . .sorry).
Then you look at competativeness. Residency programs largely use the STEP scores, exams full of obscure and largely unimportant clinical data that have little ability in predicting clinical abilities to create a bell curve out of a group of largely very motivated and intelligent people. The number of US medical students as increased dramatically pretty recently. Residency programs have not, which has made them much more competative, particularly in surgical subspecialties (like ortho).
long story short, I've gone through most of my third year, I have to decide very soon what I want to do with the rest of my life. Nothing I have done has given me any "ahah! moments." The rest of 3rd year is going to be very busy and I really don't have much, if any time to look at other specialties before I have to make decisions.
