I don't want to be a doctor anymore, Please help!! :(?
Your parents are doing the classic "Asian/Indian Overbearing Parent" thing. "You live in Free Country. You be doctor, or lawyer. You get to choose." Basically, giving you the choice between doctor or...doctor of maybe something else other than oncology, maybe. They want to see you be way more successful than them, so they can sing to the world that they raised good successful children (Look at them! Be like them! They were good parents!). It is a selfish way to live their own failed dreams, so they force them onto their children. Apply at large colleges, ones with huge sets of programs. They don't have to be far away, but you do need to explore all your options. With college, you will have a lot of regular college classes before you go into med school. Pre-med is only regular classes with a specialization towards medicine related classes, like psychology and biology and stuff. Go ahead and get into the pre-med field. You'll have two whole years to explore the campus, join clubs, research into other fields, make friends, listen to bands, do experiements with science stuff, etc etc. You look and look until you find something you absolutely love to learn about and do. Then simply switch majors. You don't have to go into college knowing what you want to do, you don't have to stick with it, you can switch it around for the first two (and possibly three) years. Once two years have passed and you hopefully have found your passion, THEN bring up the subject with the parents that what you want to do is something else other than medicine, that it is not fair that you are forced by them to be only one thing in this whole wide world, and that they should be proud of you for surviving cancer, growing into a wonderful young adult, and finding your passion in life, whatever it may be.
Why dont more people want to be doctors?
The time and money for one thing (or two things). You need 4 years of college (pre med), then you need to get accepted at a medical school (4 more years) and then if you specialize, you have yet more years. Medical school is expensive, so if you don't land scholarships, you end up racking up huge debt in student loans. So when you graduate, you have to do other things like residency, internship, etc and all the while you still have those student loans to pay off. Now you get a job as a doctor with decent pay, but now you have pay out big bucks for MALPRACTICE insurance. ANd still have the student load debt hanging over you. People sue doctors for any reason now, and it's expensive and time consuming. The cost of malpractice insurance is astronomical. Look at basic doctor's office. You have a doctor, probably a front desk receptionist or secretary, a nurse and a tech. And you have office space. Out of the fees you charge your patients, you have to pay your staff (and dont' forget you also have to pay for their benefits, etc), pay your rent and utilities, pay your malpractice insurance premiums (and hope nobody sues you), and pay for all those magazine subscriptions for your patients to read in the waiting room. Then no doubt you have home you have to pay a mortgage on, and a car or two, and still you have ALL that student loan debt to pay off. No wonder fees are so high! Sure, on paper, doctors can make a LOT of money but they don't get to keep it all. So that does not make it attractive to somebody coming out of medical school to go into practice, and they end up specializing or working at a hospital or health center.
Are you working (licensed to work) as a physician?You may have spent 12 or so years in medical school / residency program, and you’re thinking about going back for an actuarial degree?You can’t do both full time. Just keep this in mind.
My dad wants me to be a doctor or a lawyer?
Awww, trust me it's the same way in India as almost all parents want their kids to become a Doctor or Engineer and when the kid does not make the marks, he/she suicides. It's just horrible because your grades decide your major their and here it's the other way around! You decide the major not your grades! I'm a senior in High School in Michigan, and after a lot of research I chose Industrial Engineering as I feel it is a great mix of business/management and math..You still have time to think a major over as your in your Junior Year so over a year.. You need to start researching and possibly think of your top major choices for college now! Also, research the majors your dads wantrs you to pursue also.. Cause pretty much you have to be a very "Sciency" person to succeed in a medical field and that was my turn off as I always wanted to become a Pediatrician but suddenly my mind changed! Do not choose your major out of greed, do what you feel you'd like doing the rest of your life! Plus you can do Graduate studies in that major, and make even more money than with your Undergraduate degree. You need to have a talk with your parents at a good time, maybe on your dads day off or something. Whenever he is in a good mood, approach him sit down and have a chat about this. I'm sure he would understand, Best of Luck!! P.S. Also, I'm Indian and I watch a lot of Bollywood movies and recently a movie called "3 Idiots" was released and my whole family saw it in theaters. It's about 3 freshman in high school who got forced into studying Engineering by their parents and pressure from society. They did not enjoy college, and regretted never talking to their parents as one wanted to become a Photographer. Towards the end, their parents understood and let them enjoy life and pursue the major of their choice. This movie is with the stigma that new borns in India are labeled Doctors or Engineers right as they are born and many don't even think about choosing their own major cause of the pressure from everyone.
Becoming a doctor is a guaranteed way to become a slave to the state. The government has taken over healthcare and has manipulated pricing. You may be able to make money, but you will have no life. If you have a life, you will not make a lot of money. You are incorrect that there are no layoffs. Now that more doctors are hospital employed than are in private practice, layoffs are not beyond the realm of possibility. There is politics - cut throat politics where your "colleagues" steal your patients and try to undermine your work. Others that feel threatened will slander your work in patients charts. Those physicians who are the most talented diagnosticians, often are not the most productive because they are unable to provide an adequate standard of care at the hospital administration mandated 5 minutes per patient. Less patients, less production, less money. Meanwhile, Physical Therapists and Nurse Practitioners all are getting their Doctors of PT and Doctorate of Nursing and calling themselves doctors. They wear a white coat and patients call them "doctor." Physician Assistants get Doctorate of Health Science and call themselves doctors. Medicine is anything but a secure profession. Don't waste your life, your time, and go into debt to pursue it... unless, you want to sacrifice the best years of your life to take orders from hospital administrators and have patients complain because you have not spent enough time with them. What your parents are telling you may have been true a generation ago, but their perception of medicine is but a ghost of a profession past.
Becoming a doctor requires more training than most other jobs. It usually takes at least 11 years to become a doctor: 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 3 years working in a hospital. For some specialties, doctors may have to work in a hospital for up to 8 years before they are fully trained.To become a doctor, you should study biology, chemistry, physics, math, and English. It is not easy to get into medical school. You have to do very well in college and on medical school entrance tests.Students spend most of the first 2 years of medical school in labs and classrooms. They take lots of science courses. They also learn to ask patients the right questions and how to examine them. They learn how to tell what sickness a patient has. In the last 2 years, students work with patients and doctors in hospitals and clinics. After medical school, doctors go to work in a hospital for a few years. They are called residents. To be a resident, you must pass a test.If you want to be a doctor, you should like to help people. You should also be willing to study a lot.You have to know how to talk to sick people. And you should be able to make decisions and handle emergencies.
Do doctors have time for dogs?
I would consider volunteering in a hospital for the summer :) For myself, I wanted to pursue a medical career also and I decided I wanted to know what it's really like. Talk to the doctors, and figure out if you're completely set in your career path. I was afraid that I would be 24/7 on call, at work, and I found out by talking to doctors that it depends on your specialty. If you're a general surgeon or ER doctor- prepare to be on call- a lot. While some plastic surgeons have told me that they are rarely on call and set their own hours with their own clinics, and plastic surgery is something you schedule in advance so you're not on call as much. If you decide to be a foot doctor for example, you are afforded the same luxury- you get the opportunity to set your own hours and are rarely ever called in for an emergency. Anesthesiology is something I would definitely consider a high demand job. I've talked to quite a few anesthesiologists and they've all told me the same thing- very rewarding job, but extremely time consuming. They told me they are on call all the time, and called in all the time, and working long hours. Whenever there's any kind of surgery going on, especially emergency ones during the middle of the night- you will almost always need an anesthesiologist for the surgery. So for almost every surgery that goes on during the hospital, it will generally be accompanied by an anesthesiologist, no matter what hour of the night or time of the day. But they stressed to me they loved their jobs, you just have to dedicate your life to it. One anesthesiologist told me that while he loved his job, he rarely able to attend his daughter's soccer games or his son's baseball games, and when his own daughter said she wanted to pursue anesthesiology, he told her he didn't recommend it for her, because while it's a rewarding job, he didn't get to see his family nearly as often as people in other careers. He stressed to me that it is a very,very time consuming profession Here's a tip though- you don't need to know your specialty now. You just need to know if you love the medical careers. If so, then pursue medical school, and in med school, you're going to go through rotations. You'll learn and try everything- you'll get to figure out what specialty and section of medicine you like the most. I hope everything works out for you :)