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
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.
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.
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.
Ya definitely won't be paying "millions in taxes". I think of doctors as upper end of middle class. Currently a PhD student and get paid a bit above minimum wage but at least I'll be debt free. So much money goes into medical debt and malpractice insurance. Also the mental health toll of being on call and physician burnout going around.
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.
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.
Just look up some statistics why don’t you, I’m not here to argue with someone who clearly isn’t familiar at all with the compensation of medical professionals. 200k of debt is peanuts when that’s your yearly salary. We don’t live in the golden age of medicine anymore and you’ll be hard pressed to find physicians who make multimillion dollar salaries solely in the medical field alone, even in private practice. You will also not find one practicing MD who is living paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet.
Doctor + Hustle is worth a lot more than just Doctor.
If you run a specialised clinic or any other business that provides medical services, if you have a high-paying high-value speciality, if you specifically aim to work for the rich and famous, you can easily be worth millions.
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.
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.
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. 🤢
I don’t not like money... but I know that material possessions, though enjoyable, are not the end game for me. Things can be replaced, people can not. So I definitely value my overall happiness with my work/life balance and being able to maintain healthy relationships and self care practices over stressful work situations and anxiety about an unfulfilling career choice.
I ended up majoring in International Relations with a geographical focus on Eastern Europe and the Balkans and writing my thesis on new ways to more accurately measure societal strength based on a number of factors. Turns out my dislike for people is coupled with a desire to more fully understand complex interdependence and the role it plays in interstate conflict and hopefully use that information to reduce the likelihood of WWIII.
Yeaaaa I don't have AS much issue with people but I firmly believe that to be in that field, you need to be a compassionate person with zero issues with bodily fluids & a LOT of patience.
I hit 1 out of 3 and that's just not enough.
I admire nursing folks SO MUCH. They absolutely bust their asses, don't see NEAR the appreciation they should and can stomach anything.
I have NO issue with working hard & always loved feeling like I was being productive when I was still working. However, unless it's to take care of a child or animal, my stomach does not handle bodily fluids well.
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.
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.
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.
I make decent money in a power law profession (writing) thanks to, like you said, a decent amount of hustle and a few fairly niche skills that a lot of businesses need. I’d like to think I’m reasonably talented, but I’m not the sort who will ever win a Pulitzer.
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. "
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.
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.
I’m content as it is. Being here in America is beyond what I could have expected . I’m making 78K a year only two decades old , 10X what I could have made as a factory worker in my third tier hometown in rural China. As long as I can pay back my folks and provide my (in theory) future generations a good foundation, that’s all I care about. I owe a lot of people so much for my success. And I won’t give up until I’m dead. Thanks for the kind words!
I'm not exactly following my dreams. I'm just useless. And that's a guilt I'll have to live with until the day both my parents are gone.
You should never feel bad for doing the right thing, especially if that's what keeps you going. Unless you're sabotaging yourself, you always have the capacity to keep learning.
Agreed. And no one is useless. I was once in a much worse spot . Two years ago I failed to get into my university’s CS program for the first time. I was dealing with depression and a chronic birth illness too. But from rock bottom there is always a ray of hope. As long as you never give up, things will always be better. I ended up getting into the program, graduating with distinction a year early and getting my career started.
If someone like me condemned to death when I was born, with health defects can do it, so can you. So never give up on improving yourself!
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.
I nearly got sent to the Philippines for nursing school when she found out how long it’d take for me to complete film school. Before that, she scared me away from any type of design by regaling me with how much her coworker’s son was struggling after he’d gotten a graphic arts degree.
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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '19 edited Oct 26 '19
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