Читать книгу So, you want to go to Medical School? - Daniel C Merrill - Страница 6

Well, there are a lot of ways to look at this question. For starters let’s begin with your investment in time. You are going to have to be willing to invest a minimum of 12 of the best years of your life after high school before you will even begin to see the light of day from a financial standpoint or, for that matter, get good nights sleep. This will put most people in their early to mid thirties before they draw their first decent pay check. If you are interested in becoming one of the remaining real money makers, for example a Neurosurgeon, this period of indentured servitude can drag on until you are well into your late forties.

This means that you will have to defer any thought of having a family until you are squeaky close to middle age. For example, when I went to my first high school reunion in 1974, after returning to California after an extensive period of training in Minnesota, I won the prize for having the two youngest children, ages 3 and 5, of anyone in the class. No one else had a child younger than 12, and that youngster was the product of a third marriage! Even more depressing was the fact that several members of the class of 1955 had grand children older than my girls.

Along the same lines, while, at that time, I was just beginning to make a reasonable income several of my high school classmates were already looking at retirement. At that moment it struck me like a bolt of lightning that being voted the most distinguished member of the class didn’t make up for the sacrifice I had made to achieve that rather dubious honor.

In this respect, one thing has not changed during the 50 years I have been in medicine, it will still take you a God awful long time to do it!