travel with me # bath in the vast sea !!

Life Doesn’t End With Medical School

As I sit here sipping a beer on my porch relaxing on my freshly built picnic table overlooking my burgeoning vegetable garden I can’t help but remember that life doesn’t end with medical school.

I still find time to do lot’s of things I love.Build things, exercise, travel, blog.Life is pretty damn enjoyable.There are a lot of people out there that will tell you it’s all downhill once you matriculate to medical school, let the naysayers naysay, you’re going to be alright!
Let’s address the concerns of one soon-to-be-medical-student I came across while perusing the internets today:
I’m starting med school in a couple of weeks, and your words are making me feel a lot better. I’m not a naturally nervous person, but some of the people in my class have been freaking out, and that attitude is pretty contagious. I think I’m going to print some of this out and put it on the wall above my desk to remind myself to be optimistic.
Enjoying my last summer of freedom.No more long breaks for me!Medical school starts in one month than it is all downhill from there!(maybe I’m paraphrasing a wee bit, but you get the idea)
Let’s tackle this “no more long breaks” theory.Here’s how my medical career has boiled down so far:

quote
Summer off between college graduation and medical school – 2 monthsSummer off between MS1 and MS2 – 2 monthsSummer off between MS2 and MS3 – 2 months (-) 1 month for Step 1 prep = 1 monthSummer off between MS3 and MS4 – 1 month (-)3 weeks for Step 2 prep = 1 weekSummer off between MS4 and Internship – 2 months!Break between internship and residency – 2 weeks.

Let’s add that up.In the last 5 years I have had approximately 31 weeks of vacation.

Add in Christmas breaks during med school and that comes to 35 plus the FOUR weeks of PAID vacation I got this year that is 39 WEEKS or approximately 8 weeks a year!Go cruise around Facebook and look at your friends from undergraduate.How many of them have had 8 weeks off a year since graduation?I bet not many.

Here’s another way to look at it.I am 28 years old, get 4 weeks of paid vacation and state holidays off and make ~52k per year.How many other people my age are in that situation?
For those of you just starting out, you’re either going to enjoy this trip or be bitter.When you put it in perspective it really isn’t a bad road to go down.Yeah, someone is going to mention school loans.Who cares, I’d rather be 300k in debt about to make a surgical attending’s salary than 100k in debt and making a whopping 35k a year as a social worker (there are PLENTY of people in that situation).

Now be happy!