<p>This is a simple question. I’m currently in pre-dentistry, and I just wanted to ask if it would allow significant vacation time. If not, what type of careers would? For instance, I want to be able to take a month off and visit another country. My goal in life is to explore the world, and I’d like very much to be able to take off a month maybe each year to do so.</p>
<p>I am not sure about dentistry, but teaching certainly comes to mind. Summer vacation every year! (most of the time. Some teachers opt to teach summer school)</p>
<p>Academia also works.</p>
<p>Maybe you should get a job the requires you, as part of your job, to travel the world, though you wouldn’t have any more vacation time than any other job.</p>
<p>Maybe you could work in diplomacy/international relations (State Dept.), or humanitarian non-profit work, or work at the UN, or work at the Red Cross, etc…</p>
<p>Traveling around the world for work != vacation. I travel a good bit as part of my research and I scrape together maybe a couple of days to actually sightsee. The rest of the time is working 16 hour days while fighting jet lag.</p>
<p>^I think if you’re work is in diplomacy or non-profit work, you will have more opportunities to explore than doing research or business (which require lots of travel as well)</p>
<p>Summer camp counselor
Temporary Call Center Worker
Security Guard at Special Events
McDonald’s Cashier
Nursing Assistant
On-call garbageman</p>
<p>See where we are going with this? Make a name for yourself then you can have all the vacation time you want when you are 40.</p>
<p>Most dentists run their own practice. You’d certainly be able to decide to close for a month, but you’d still have an office and staff to pay for during that whole month with no revenue in that time… sounds expensive. Not to mention your patients who need dental work during that month will end up going elsewhere.</p>
<p>Actually I think that if you work in your own dentistry practice with one or two other dentist partners, you can probably leave for vacation with your partners running the practice when you’re gone.</p>