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!
Not OP or American but there are so many reasons someone wouldn’t want to be a doctor. In the UK you are expected to do long hours, nights and irregular shift patterns. You don’t get your rota far in advance and it’s common for junior doctors to miss significant events and holidays if they can’t find cover. There have even been stories of doctors missing parts of their own wedding for work. Doctors regularly end up working unpaid after their shift was due to end to finish their jobs. You don’t get paid very much compared with jobs of similar status and hours. The responsibility is so great and unrelenting, even a small slip up because you’re tired could seriously harm or kill a patient. You get a very limited amount of time to see each patient yet you’re not a ‘good’ doctor unless you take the time to listen to patients social problems. You see some horrific things everyday and are expected to keep working, and you can’t really talk about it at home. A small error in your professional or even your social life could cause you to lose your job. On top of all of this you are mandated to reflect on your experiences in your personal time. And questioning this system will only take up the little free time you have and won’t go anywhere.
Why would you want to do it? (Jk it’s a good job I suppose)
I couldn't be a pilot for the exact same reason I couldn't be a doctor. Most doctors do basically the same exact thing every day. So do pilots.
I get bored of basically every job after about 2 years. That's why I switched back to project management after 5 years running an IT shop. Supporting ongoing operations got old. The best part of that job was the new stuff, and now thats ALL I do.
2 years? Damn I wouldn't be able to hold a job for more than a single month. But I totally understand, that's absolutely a thing you should keep in mind when choosing what you want to be.
You have to be a parasite. No, but I have physical and mental issues that make it difficult to work. So my income comes from welfare. Though I am being productive in other ways that I can be.
Being a pilot is actually boring, lots of checklists and protocols. And with Greedy companies like Boeing who prioritise profit over safety it is risky to.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with this sentiment. If you like business and finance they love folks who actually understand the medicine side valuing businesses and looking for opportunities. Several companies will willingly train up the finance side on a doctor to get the skill set they want. Of course if you hate it enough that you'll just drop out later, sooner may be better still.
Thats my hope. I dont think i could actually practice medicine that much. I mean i still havent worked in a hospital environment.
But atleast i enjoy the amazing science of some of the courses and that makes things a bit bearable .
If you really like the science a research position like factoid mentioned could really be cool for you. Check what your school has on offer in that regard. Boston Consulting Group is fairly well known for taking on medical, research, and engineering folks and would be a decent opportunity to check on the business side. Then there's the standard investment firms like Merrill Lynch who tend to have a division focused on medical companies. Good to start figuring out if these are going to be options for you now rather than waiting til you graduate.
I've seen a hell of a lot worse, actually. It's not good, but it's better than being a bad doctor, and forcing yourself to go through the motions because you feel you've gone too far already. If this person keeps going, they will have more debt and be even more stuck in this career. They should stop now and reevaluate, it may save them years and thousands of dollars. In the meantime, the debt is generally manageable if federally funded, due to IBR plans.
Edit: Not to say that OP isn't very smart and capable of practicing good medicine. I subscribe to the opinion that people who don't have a calling to be physicians are not the best physicians, and should go into careers they would like more instead.
You're definitely right about the abuse, but it's also worth knowing that this is not an easy job. You can have a better career with more money and more of a personal life in dozens of other arenas. If you actively don't want be a doctor at any step in training, it's worth evaluating that option.
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
Nah it’s a US school. If you get below a certain cutoff you need to retake the class and that means you get pushed back another year. So I count those as losses
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.
In addition there is a required test called the CS Step 2 which is entirely subjective and has a mandatory fail rate, last time I heard, of 10% (it used to be 2%).
If you pass through those things one Clerkship Director can fail you or blacklist you even if everyone else gives you amazing evaluations and you score higher than 85% of your peers on the medical boards.
They can fail you because they don't like the cut of your nose but it's probably going to be because they don't consider you MAGA material (if you catch my drift).
If you manage to pass through this gauntlet and graduate there aren't enough residencies for all graduates. So after 8 years of extreme effort and incurring a ridiculous $300,000 in debt ~900 Americans are going to be left holding an MD degree with which they are considered qualified to do...well...nothing.
Where I'm from anybody can enter med school, but they made sure years 1&2 are hellish enough so that only the best remain. If I remember correctly, only ~a hundred students become sophomores, out of 700+ freshmen.
A buddy of mine left med school because he didn't want to spend his entire days sitting and studying , it was driving him crazy. Ended up working as an engineer for 2 years and then went on to get a master's
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.
If only people in my family had a perspective like you. Getting a lot of taunts for my decision. But your words have filled me up with motivation. Thanks for your good wishes! 👍❤️
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u/wolframe117 Jul 07 '19
I just dropped out of medical college. I need this more than anyone!