<p>“So all of you MDs are not recommending medical school for your children? Who is going to take care of us in our old age??”</p>
<p>THIS MD is only saying I wouldn’t wan’t it to be MY idea, MY “fault”, or to be responsible for pushing, cajoling, encouraging. I’m sure me and H would only bring them down. I think you have to want it deeply and intensely, and probably not for the money, to get through it, and that can’t come from somewhere, or somebody else.</p>
<p>I double majored in undergraduate in Latin and Film Studies. Eventually took a law degree and am 27 years into that. I’m professionally successful, but as I often remind my wife, I didn’t get into the practice of law to get rich – and in that I’ve also succeeded. I would not recommend it to my sons. It’s frankly too hard and too stressful. A good way to support a family, but not the sort of job you love going to every day. Fortunately neither seems to have any interest in the law. My wife’s BA is in English, but the boys are unlikely to follow that, either.</p>
<p>My older son is a policy wonk, studying poli sci and history and international relations at his college and loving it. My high school junior is quite good at everything he studies, but seems drawn more to the quantitative side, which is a complete mystery to both my wife and I. (We have many times given silent thanks that he has never asked for our “help” in calculus or trigonometry.) He may settle on computer science.</p>
<p>Gee- it’s easier to get into medical school than my year- only 1 in 3 then. Those of us with college age kids trained in a different era, with different expectations. Today’s applicants have different expectations, I’m sure. Managed care has made the biggest impact, being employees with regulated hours even in residency is so different. Maybe todays grads accept all of the paperwork more readily than those of us who expected to practice medicine and not all of the other sundries.</p>
<p>HS senior nephew wants to be a physician, his dad is in primary care. If he still wants to after widening his horizons at a good college he’ll be good at it. Talked to an internal medicine specialist the other day who said primary care internal medicine is not drawing new physicians- payscale and interesting patients going to the subspecialists being some reasons (FP’s can earn money with office procedures internists don’t do). Gone are the days when a physician controlled his/her life- taking as much time to see patients and seeing fewer (accepting income resulting from less “productivity”), working as much as wanted to with income reflecting it… Control has shifted to outside middlemen. Medicine being run more by a business model than a patient care one. So many hoops to jump through, insurance dominated medical decisions it can be frustrating to not just do what is medically best but to have to consider the almighty third party payer.</p>
<p>BTW- I put son’s laundry in the dryer after he had gone to bed and was sleepy during my third reminder. The next evening H prompted him at least 4 times to finish folding/put it away (he would start and leave in the middle to do something else). Definitely absent minded.</p>