| This thread kind of turns my stomach, and makes me a little bit angry.
I'm an engineer. My husband's a composer. I'm from a two-physician family, my husband's mother is a high school chemistry teacher.
My parents would gripe about unbearable HMOs and their declining control over patient care. I gripe about redoing 60% of the designs that I do (no exaggeration) because the client still can't decide where they want the walls when we're halfway through constructing the building. My husband gripes about the politics and serious game-playing in academia.
No career is perfect!! What is with all this disillusionment? Have you all NEVER had job satisfaction? Have you NEVER had a day where you helped someone, or made a difference, or changed someone's mind? This life is all about saying, "I created that. I helped that person. I gave that person good advice."
Is money really what it's all about? My family's darkest times were the ones when we had plenty of money. I was born when my dad was in medical school, and I remember not having any of the vogue toys of the era, but I used to love to set up plastic cups at the end of the hall and go bowling with my brother, or make brownies and frost them like dominos. Then we'd play dominos with the brownies. We'd finger-paint in pudding because it was cheaper than finger paint (added bonus: didn't taste lousy when you ate it). Nowadays, we have BMWs and Corvettes and no family. What a stellar trade.
My husband and I work hard for our money, we don't make a ton, but we chose professions that we love and we're happy for it and for the most part, we're climbing out of our student loans and can manage to buy something cool for ourselves every now and then. It's going to be harder when we start our family and when I have to cut back my currently-long hours to something more manageable, but we're going to be okay.
Y'know what? If you love medicine, go into medicine. If you love the law, go into law. If you love writing music, write music (but marry an engineer). Yes, less money is going to cause more stress, but if it's not one thing, it'll be another... Life is stressful at best. If you think you're going to be happy if only you have a ton of money, you're going to be unpleasantly surprised when you end up with a handicapped child, or when your spouse dies at a young age, or when bad things happen to good people. All you can do is to do your best, do what makes you happy, and try not to go into debt. If you want to provide a better life for your children, try to teach them how to be happy and how to pursue their passions. |