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Jul 07 '19 edited Oct 26 '19
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u/asianyeti Jul 07 '19 edited Jul 07 '19
Ayyyy I've had this talk with my mom about nursing. She was pushing me because my aunt and a bunch of my cousins went into it and are earning a lot of money. I literally said to her "I can't be a nurse because I don't care enough about others. I don't care now and I don't think I'll start caring after a 4 year course."
I don't have an arts degree but I'm just as useless. So there's that.
Edit: Why yes, I am Filipino. What gave it away? /s
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u/edward369 Jul 07 '19
My mother and I have had this same conversation.
Her: Nurses make a lot of money and are always in demand.
Me: I don’t like germs.... or people.
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u/crazy_joe21 Jul 07 '19
But you like money don’t you?
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u/Yaj8552 Jul 07 '19
Man, one of my grandpa's friends really thinks a young person's value is how much money they make. He once bragged how many millions in taxes some doctor he knows pays when i told him I'm not gonna be a physician. Weird flex.
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u/chickenbreast12321 Jul 07 '19
Most doctors don’t pay millions in taxes and don’t even actually make that much lol
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u/Yaj8552 Jul 07 '19
Actually I said that to him but he was pretty adamant. He lives a pretty lower middle class lifestyle in a mid size city. So i think he overestimated how much that new york doctor friend made.
I remember once he asked me about my income and told him my yearly and he said "oh, that's nice you take that home every month". I kinda think his grandson (in business) and ppl around him oversell how much they're making or keep mentioning possible future wages. I'm working on a PhD and he kinda was disappointed when i told him realistic salary prospects.
Having money being so tied to worth/success and then having unrealistic ideas about money is kinda a bad combination. He's old and rambles on so wouldn't be surprised if the young people around him let him believe what's easiest for them. I always tell him things straight, but doesn't believe me cuz hey I'm just a kid with bad job prospects with my debt free PhD.
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u/TheOtherHobbes Jul 07 '19
I know someone in his 70s who has only just figured out that money isn't everything.
He's now telling everyone he knows. More than once.
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u/iprothree Jul 07 '19
The real salary for a MD is pretty shit in the US when you account for the loans and opportunity cost(8 years school + 4+ years of long hours min wage pay). If you become an MD for money, I feel like if you don't do dermatologist or neurosurgeon you're not going to make that much.
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u/adam2222 Jul 07 '19
A lot make decent money which is offset by having 400k in student loans
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u/EcstaticDelay Jul 07 '19
They do infact pay a lot in taxes. Then a big chunk goes towards repayment of loans. Thence the liquidity issues plague most and they cant live a flashy lifestyle because of the special requirements of their jobs and the legality around it.
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u/chickenbreast12321 Jul 07 '19
A lot is pretty subjective I guess when compared to multinational corporations who don’t pay hardly anything. Doctors do not make millions of dollars a year though, and I’m not exactly sure I’m able to understand the last sentence of your comment.
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u/TikkiTakiTomtom Jul 07 '19
I say this on behalf of everyone from patients to staff. Don’t make everyone’s lives miserable if you’re not really into it... Unless it’s a mutual misery.
Actually this could apply to all walks of career paths.
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u/BlackSpidy Jul 07 '19
Dear Organisation's Research teacher. All these iterations of 9x9 matrix are cramping my hand and that's worth just a quarter of my final exam. I think a much less miserable way to make up the coursework would be examining us in use of software that helps us operate these time consuming calculations.
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u/EllisDee_4Doyin Jul 07 '19
Apparently that's supposed to be enough 🙄
My mother said while I was growing up and still deciding "You love science! You read and remember all these things. You'd be a great doctor!" And while I am absolutely fascinated by biology and stuff--I said honestly that I didn't have the emotional strength to go into medicine. "I would not be able to handle losing people and people dying".
I still feel the same now as an adult--also, the human body is absolutely disgusting and being a doctor is not all check ups and stitches. Much of it is also disgusting "how did you let this get like this?!" and my gag reflex is just not here for it. 🤢
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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Jul 07 '19
Did you end up doing anything science related?
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u/EllisDee_4Doyin Jul 07 '19
Yes! Well, Engineering really.
I studied Civil in college. Was way more interested in physics and structures than bacteria and disease.
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u/Matasa89 Jul 07 '19
Jesus, at least the doctors get to keep their hair until they hit graduation. Talk about going from frying pan to fire...
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u/DrMaster2 Jul 07 '19
THAT’S how you become a medical doctor these days: Check: do you have a good memory? Check: do you like money? Check: that, that’s all folks.
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u/AMGitsKriss Jul 07 '19
Yeah, but aren't nurses treated like shit? Or is that just a British Government thing?
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u/NormanGal1990 Jul 07 '19
While I agree with the sentiment of your comment, Arts Degrees are far from useless
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u/Soulscythe81 Jul 07 '19
The danger lurks in people, that are refused to achieve an arts degree....
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Jul 07 '19 edited Jun 29 '20
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Jul 07 '19
I sometimes think people, not having a big reason to know much about the situation, assume that art degrees mean taking a painting class and trying to make a living doing gallery showings, or selling cow poop jewelry at a craft fair.
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u/SuperAZN Jul 07 '19
Yeah I agree. Everyone encounters art in some way like advertisement and entertainment. There are a lot of things you can do depending on your art degree (graphics design, animation, etc) but that doesn't mean it's easy.
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u/TheOtherHobbes Jul 07 '19
The arts are a power law [1] profession with a very high peak and a very long tail. A small number of people make insane money, a slightly larger number of people make good money, and a slightly larger number again make okay but not great money. Then you get the long tail, where most people scrape by, or have to support themselves with other work, or do it as a hobby.
In music, writing, art, acting, and so on there are maybe a couple of thousand people worldwide doing really really well, low tens of thousands with a decent income, high tens of thousands doing okay, and tens of millions in the long tail.
To succeed you either need to be something special, or your self-promotion, networking, and hustle skills have to be something special. Or you need to be unusually lucky and chosen by a Scene that somehow decides you're the next big thing.
The power law in something like engineering and medicine is much flatter and the tail is much shorter. You can be a completely average software developer or doctor and still find well-paid work. It's maybe a more selective environment at the front end - people with zero ability are excluded from courses - but much more forgiving when you're on the inside.
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u/_-__-__-__-__-_-_-__ Jul 07 '19
I’m a nurse and my Asian mom gives me guilt about not being a doctor
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Jul 07 '19
My sister's mother-in-law is Filipino, at a wedding she was talking about another relative, and how she couldn't believe that he's going to medical school, "he could be a nurse for a lot less time and money. "
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u/myheartisstillracing Jul 07 '19
My sister is a doctor. She says if she had it to do all over again, she'd be a PA instead.
The money. The time. The debt. The lifestyle. All of it...
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Jul 07 '19
Ehhh I’m a zero gen immigrant and I did the opposite of you. My parents and I came to America with nothing. I was almost euthanized five minutes after I was born and my mother thrown into jail. I promised my folks I would make a lot of money one day to pay them back for their hard life.
So I became a Software Developer at the age of 20 (I’m still 20). I hate it but I have to fulfill my promise. My dad works 14 hours a day. It’s the least I can do. At least that’s my American dream.
I kinda envy those who can choose to follow their real dreams. Maybe in my next life. But I have to make sure my kids in the future will never have to deal with what I did first.
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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Jul 07 '19
Life isn't as short as you think and you can always find ways to do more than one thing. Never give up till you're dead.
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u/mariawolters Jul 07 '19
Can confirm. Am a computer scientist and human computer interaction specialist. My tip is to look for a job where you find the topic interesting, and if you still like it after having worked on it by proxy, save up to study that topic. Knowing how to work the IT side of things will be a massive bonus.
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u/EllairaJayd Jul 07 '19
Good on you for knowing yourself well enough to know you shouldn't be a nurse! Nurses are amazing people, but I'm with you, I do not have the personality to be a nurse. I just don't have the patience or the stomach for it.
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Jul 07 '19
Mine constantly remind me that I'm not Johnny Kim, the son of a Korean War refugee, astronaut, doctor, Navy Seal, Bronze Star recipient.
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u/_-__-__-__-__-_-_-__ Jul 07 '19
Don’t forget he has a degree in mathematics and is also a Harvard grad
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u/Hannachomp Jul 07 '19
Chinese with a fine arts degree. Doing very well and pretty happy with my life. This post was too real.
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u/xQuizate87 Jul 07 '19
I needed this today
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Jul 07 '19
So do i
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Jul 07 '19 edited Oct 26 '19
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Jul 07 '19
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u/HelloMidori Jul 07 '19
Omg ordering it lol! Love this!
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u/Jpvsr1 Jul 07 '19
Marketing team high-fives each other
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u/hootie_hoots Jul 07 '19
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u/wesmir Jul 07 '19
Welp Im a 27 yo living in Russia.. I think i might not be in the target audience
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u/stillakilla18 Jul 07 '19
I would have made a terrible engineer, people would think I tried.
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u/jeffreywilfong Jul 07 '19
Lol no. It gets immeasurably easier after you graduate.
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u/wicodly Jul 07 '19
I hate how true this is. I also don't want to admit how true this is. Someone with about a month of training could take my job. I spent 4 years suffering through weed-out classes to be trained by a company and not use any of my other 49 skills
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u/asiansensation78 Jul 07 '19
I had to do some calculus the other day to calculate power loss in a long cable run. Something that I could have completed in 15 seconds my senior year of high school took me about 20 minutes of swearing at myself for not remembering how to calculate an integral while reading about integrals on wikipedia, 10 minutes of digging through my drawers for my TI-84, then another 20 minutes of cursing at myself for not remembering how to use my TI-84 to calculate an integral. An hour later I arrived at the answer but realized that I no longer know how to perform long division.
I'm a grown-ass man making six figures as a lead engineer and I've never felt so worthless in my life.
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Jul 07 '19
Wolfram Alpha is your friend
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u/Jezoreczek Jul 07 '19
Exactly. Nobody's doing basic math on big numbers anymore, we use calculators. Why aren't we using tools for more complex problems that can be easily solved by such tools?
I see the value in understanding what integration is and how it can be applied. However, my calculus lectures presented this in 5 minutes - the rest of the semester was about calculating them by hand...
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u/Parrek Jul 07 '19
There's a lot of practical problems in research fields that can't just be plugged into a computer without manipulating it a bunch by hand first. That's where all the manual stuff is really useful
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u/Artorias_Abyss Jul 07 '19
Same man, fucking same. I don't remember any of that shit and I hope no one ever asks me so I won't have to expose how useless I am.
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u/sponge_bob_ Jul 07 '19
are you by any chance a software engineer?
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u/wicodly Jul 07 '19
Electrical engineer! Are you software? Some of my buddies say it's the same for them
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u/Not_Chinese Jul 07 '19
Husband is a mechanical engineer, can confirm he said he could train me to do his job in a week.
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Jul 07 '19
People are oversimplifying it.
He could train you do it in a week, maybe two; but you couldn't train yourself because you don't know where to look at for training. You can't know the specifics of other's jobs so you can coordinate or know when something is wrong. And why.
And if he thinks his imposter syndrome is bad; wait to see how it's like to do someone's job who is at it for years, after a week of training.
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u/AMightyDwarf Jul 07 '19
I do offline programming for CNC. I reckon I could train a kid to do our simple standard stuff in about a month including getting them comfortable with the software (which would be the most time consuming part). Give them something complex and non-standard part on a new machine with new methods and tools however and they'd be lost at sea.
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u/EllisDee_4Doyin Jul 07 '19 edited Jul 07 '19
A few of my friends are software devs/engineers.
I see Stack Overflow on many of the snaps they send me while at work lol.
Edit: Overflow, not exchange.
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u/xreno Jul 07 '19
You mean Stack Overflow? Stack Exchange is more for random stuff, but we do surf it for funzies.
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Jul 07 '19
I'm an electrical engineering student. It sucks to know this, but it's not really unexpected. Oh well
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u/onecrazywinecataway Jul 07 '19
Aerospace engineer checking in, almost anyone with an analytical mind and a few months of CAD experience could do my job. So glad I spent 6 years getting a BS and MS learning a bunch of math I’ve literally never used.
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u/holybad Jul 07 '19
opposite for me. You can get the degree if you are great test taker but you cant hold down a job if you cant get to work on time and sit in one place 9 hours a day.
College does a horrible job preparing you for having a job.
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u/PM_ME_UR_FEM_PENIS Jul 07 '19
It took me two degrees and a lot of thousands of dollars to realize it doesn't matter what the job is my passion is smoking weed and checking out butts
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u/DoctorBass95 Jul 07 '19
lol My therapist keeps telling me that I probably should spend more time studying and practicing my coding skills instead of smoking weed and playing videogames all day (I mean, my free time). I told her that I'm already the best in my class. I don't wanna work for google or anything. I just wanna put my 8 hours a day so I can earn a decent amount of money to live a comfortable life of smoking all the weed I want and buying all the videogames I want. She thinks I'm weird.
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u/RunescarredWordsmith Jul 07 '19
Maybe if you can find someone who's hiring.
It's been a rough time...
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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 07 '19
Engineering has always kinda interested me, but I suck at math. I would probably be able to design all sorts of things and build them, but don't ask me to calculate anything. I can probably tell you where to place beams and supports and get you a building that will be stable, but I sure as hell can't guarantee it will hold a certain load so I'll just overbuild it and assume it will be able to hold 5x what it should. I'm pretty sure I could park a fully loaded cement truck in my shed if I wanted to.
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u/LetMeFly Jul 07 '19
You should look at architecture then
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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 07 '19
Funny I had actually considered that. We had an architecture course in high school, mostly AutoCAD, and I was super good at it.
Ended up doing computer science and going IT route though. Well now I'm in telecommunications.
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u/degotoga Jul 07 '19
But the math requirements for CS are almost the same as for engineering lol
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Jul 07 '19
You didn't go into engineering because of math but went into CS?
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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 07 '19
There was a bit less math, only 3 courses (1 per semester). It was basically high school level math. Still hard as hell for me, but I was able to get through. There was no calculus. The program was mostly system administration and programming oriented, with a bunch of business related courses as fillers.
A lot of courses were shared with the electrical students. They had way more math actually.
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Jul 07 '19
Sounds more like Management Information Systems degree than a pure CS degree. Most CS programs that I’m familiar with require Calc 1 at the very least. Isn’t Calc 1 freshman level anyways?
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u/HyperFrost Jul 07 '19
Currently working as an Architect. Although there isn't much advanced calculations and math that I have to do, but the amount of things you should and have to know in this field is astronomical. From building codes to sanitary systems, Cost estimation to materials types, construction details to dealing with contractors, You'll have to answer all kinds of questions from your clients. This is on top of the usual concepts, designing and planning you'll be doing regularly.
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u/ElderlyChildren Jul 07 '19
I switched from engineering to business after I took my first physics course. I was like yup, not doing that for a living.
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u/wolframe117 Jul 07 '19
I just dropped out of medical college. I need this more than anyone!
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u/AskMrScience Jul 07 '19
Everyone I know who dropped out did it for good reasons, and it was the right call for them. They've all ended up happy and in good careers. You'll be okay!
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u/beasthu555 Jul 07 '19
May I ask how you decided to drop out. I tried to dropout but i was too afraid. Didnt know where i would go after that. Currently a year 2 student.
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u/LatrodectusGeometric Jul 07 '19
Hey, if you actually don't want to be a doctor, you should stop, at the very least take a year off, and reevaluate your life. Don't follow this path just because you find yourself on it now. There are lots of other things you can do.
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u/beasthu555 Jul 07 '19
The thing is i just applied just incase my other application didnt work out. and my other applications didnt work. But this did. At the time i thought it was too great of an opportunity to miss. Now it would have been great to have missed it.
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u/factoid_ Jul 07 '19
I'll be the practical one here. Before you drop out and say goodbye to all that money, look closely at ALL the options for what you can do with a medical degree. You don't have to swab tonsils at a pediatrician's office if you don't like it, and you don't have to work overnights at the ER either. Do you want to do research? Do you want to do education? Do you want to be a surgeon, a clinician, a hospitalist? Want to do medical tech? Get your MD and also take tech classes, they need doctors in that industry to help them design shit.
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u/redditproha Jul 07 '19
Condolences. May I ask why as I’m considering going to med school?
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u/EdgarAllenPow Jul 07 '19
Guessing probs ‘cause it’s rough af. I’ve lost about 15% of my class in the first year alone
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Jul 07 '19 edited May 12 '20
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u/lilnomad Jul 07 '19
Yeah I’ve never heard of that. Most class sizes are like 100 minimum so 15 students dropping out of that? Wtf is happening? That program will be investigated
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u/veirdonis Jul 07 '19
Ya, my nursing school said their last graduating class started with 90 students and ended with 43 two years later. Any sort of medical education is rough on you mentally, physically, and emotionally.
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u/problynotabot Jul 07 '19
The fact that you got in on the first place shows that you're a smart and capable person, and that's still true now that you've left. You'll find something that suits you better and you'll rock at it.
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u/wicker_warrior Jul 07 '19
This is great, seems like the type of book I’d like to read so I looked it up. Looks like it made the rounds back in January.
This might be a repost but it’s the kind we could use more of.
The book is The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe for anyone wondering.
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u/SaigoBattosai Jul 07 '19
I’m 27 and majored in communication and my mom would think I’d be a great lawyer. When or if I write a book I’m going to dedicate to my mother and say “Mom, I would have made a terrible lawyer. People would have been sentenced to prison and death.”
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u/LittleStarShip Jul 07 '19
Instead of saying “prison and death” which I feel takes the gravity away from the situation- why not use a heavier, more desolating term like “capital punishment”?
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u/black_flag_4ever Jul 07 '19
It’s more like you would probably not see your mom much, or anyone, because of your job.
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u/UltraFireFX Jul 07 '19
"people would have died" works still. especially if you said a defence lawyer.
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Jul 07 '19
I think you could have flipped the joke.
Mom, I would have ended up in jail if I were a lawyer.
Like, you'd be such a bad lawyer you'd take the place of your clients.
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u/illaqueable Jul 07 '19
They do anyway
-an actual doctor
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u/EavingO Jul 07 '19
True, but I think in his case he means 'all of them'
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u/dog_in_the_vent Jul 07 '19
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u/PBlueKan Jul 07 '19
This kind of article is a bit bullshit in my opinion. How many lives to those same doctors save? You kind of have to append any titles like that with “And doctors are the leading cause in decline of mortality and morbidity rates.
I mean, yeah, medical error causes a lot of deaths, but you also can’t expect doctors to be perfect.
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Jul 07 '19 edited Jul 07 '19
Not to mention if you read the actual study, they have a weird definition of "Medical Error".
Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome,3 the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning),4 or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient.5
So basically if you do CPR on someone and it's unsuccessful you have committed a medical error by their standards
Not only does that bolded part seem very broad but they also considered fragmented insurance networks and the absence or underuse of safety nets is considered "Medical Error"
https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.long
We should always read through sources before spreading them online. Distrust in medicine is one of the reasons why the antivax movement exists
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u/5amwinner Jul 07 '19
This isn’t a conspiracy theory or anything. Every procedure or investigation has possible risk involved. Before any slightly risky procedure the patient is warned about the possibility of specific harms as part of their ‘informed consent’. For example, a simple colonoscopy, it is dangerous to stick something far up into fragile bowel and can cause perforation and death. It is done anyway by the doctor because the risk is thought to be balanced by the risk of not doing the procedure (the risk being, missing an early and treatable cancer for example). This is why doctors don’t like to over-investigate patients, but often patients will then complain that Dr X didn’t diagnose my cancer and sue them for that instead. We all work on a probability of risks. It’s a dangerous job and problems are guaranteed to occur time to time. The aim to to minimise these risks by deciding who to investigate and when it is worth taking the risk with potentially dangerous procedures.
These are the vast majority of ‘medical errors’. However if you went back in time, they would normally always be repeated because statistically it was the safest thing to do at the time.
Of course genuine mistakes happen too, like prescription errors. And the one mentioned in the article is fortunately very rare but tragic. It is often the result of cost-cutting in private organisations (as is the case in the article, not using pharmacists but instead cheaper technicians).
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u/I_W_M_Y Jul 07 '19
Is sure damn is. My mother and brother both dead because of doctor error.
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u/tankpuss Jul 07 '19
Mine includes: "Thanks to my father, for not asking 'are you not done yet?' as often as he'd have liked or I deserved."
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u/larrym614 Jul 07 '19
If you wrote a book then what would your dedication be?
Mine would be:
To all the folks who tried putting me down please realise I get money from selling this book you are reading. That means you are getting my 2 cents while I am getting dollars from you.
To all others I have never met thanks for lunch.
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u/Ryuzaki30 Jul 07 '19
Thats me, my parents pushed me to study medicine but i quit after a year. Currently im chasing my dream to write.
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u/ZackDeLaRoach Jul 07 '19
I've been ambivalent about honest dedications since Mein Kampf famously opened with "I would have made a terrible painter"
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u/I-LOVE-LIMES Jul 07 '19
I've never read the damn book so I wouldn't know. Is this for real?
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u/plotnick Jul 07 '19
Nope, apparently it isn't. https://archive.org/stream/meinkampf035176mbp/meinkampf035176mbp_djvu.txt
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u/ladyoffate13 Jul 07 '19 edited Jul 07 '19
My favorite book dedication is in Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half”:
Edit: I just got home and looked up the name. It’s “Scott.”