What Careers Are For Me If I Want To Leave School

I want to have a career as a rapper. Should I drop out of school? If so, how can I convince my parents to let me do so?

When I was working with some of the world’s most talented musicians, singers and songwriters, I knew some of them would be famous.The ones who made music and got a recording contract were the luckiest and were among the best of the bunch.The uneducated ones were at a terrible disadvantage because they could not fully understand the contracts they were signing, and the mutual obligations they were promising to fulfill, or which actions by their record company and various others they could reasonably expect to occur.So because they could not understand adequately, they were at the mercy of rapacious others.The record companies didn’t promote the recorded songs adequately. They didn’t produce the music as well or with the producer preferred by the musicians. Instead, as was their right, the recording company used their own studios, own producers, and substituted their own musician management, alienating musicians from those who ‘got them there’ and cared most about them.The musicians were at risk of becoming a ‘one hit wonder’ at best, and then fading into obscurity.As someone who was once in the business and working as a music lawyer, I advise every singer, songwriter and musician to find a way to stay in school. Hone your mind. Learn to argue and self-advocate. There is no better place to practice these skills than college or a university because the stakes in real life are too high.Your parents want to protect you and give you every advantage. That is why they want you to remain in school and why I am advising you to follow their advice.Be a rapper, but learn how to learn by staying in school too. You can choose both options. It may take longer than 4 years to get your degree, and the whole higher education thing may seem fruitless to you, as taking the History of Western Civilization or English or American Literature does not at first seem related to being in the music industry — but I promise the skills you as a talented rapper will gain will be worth it especially in the long run if you, indeed, have the talent which inspires people to listen to you rap.

Should I quit med school for a music career?

Absolutely not.I’m also in medical school and I was having a hard time with it for the past two years.I was fully investing myself to my studies, I didn’t get enough sleep, ate too much, was extremely stressed, stopped hanging out with my friends because I needed more time to study, had to break up with my girlfriend (an angel) and yet my grades were still too low, it was extremely difficult for me to study in medical school even though becoming a medical doctor was my most desired goal.So I decided to quit. I went to my professors and advisors and told them about my decision. I wanted to move away, study business administration or marketing, have my own startup company, make a mobile app etc. I had so many ideas, so many possible career paths.One of my professors spared a couple of hours of his schedule just to talk to me about this.He told me about this guy: Between music and medicine.He said, “Whatever it is that you want to do, you’ll get the chance to do it - just make sure you get your medical degree first.” I believe he is right.Now I’m still in medical school, my grades are improving, I’m losing weight, life is getting better. I still have some entrepreneurial goals written down and I’ll get to them as soon as I graduate. But I’ll get my degree first.

Why do military pilots often change careers when they leave the military?

Two reasons in my personal experience, in addition to those already mentioned. First, military pilots are generally pretty ambitious, bright and accomplished people. They've passed multiple screens for what is seen as a very desirable job, i.e. they have an undergrad degree, often technical, 18 months of flight school which is the equivalent of another degree, were selected to become a pilot which is generally a very competitive process, and often are sponsored to go to top grad schools during their military career. This means they have lots of options for very interesting, impactful, and lucrative careers after retiring around the age of 40. Many decide that flying an air bus around is neither impactful, lucrative, or after 20 years of more extreme flying, even interesting. Especially when compared to the other opportunities someone with their background can easily transition into.     The second reason is more prosaic, flying is frankly quite boring 99.9% of the time once you've mastered the craft, and you really want it to be boring 100% of the time. Pilots are expected to rote memorize a manual of  emergency procedures, rote memorize the equipment on their aircraft, rote memorize normal flight procedures...  It is not expected nor desired for a pilot to be creative in how they perform their day to day job, come up with new procedures, equipment, a better way to fly an approach, or a way to make flying better for the environment. Even for test pilots this kind of thing has to be exhaustively planned and tested, so a good pilot is one who follows a very exact set of rules exactly. The only times you don't do this are generally emergencies not covered in the procedures, so the few times you get to be creative on the job are unpleasant at best. In addition, you're probably in a union so seniority trumps performance in almost all cases, again not the type of thing that generally motivates a high achieving Type A personality.      There's nothing wrong with this kind of job, it just generally isn't a good cultural fit with the type of person who makes it through all the screens mentioned in part 1. In fact in my experience aviation has one of the biggest mismatches between personality type required and personality type of those actually in the field; probably a fertile research field for someone.

What are good reasons to quit medical school?

The only time when you definitely should quit med school is when you do not like it, cannot see yourself working as a doctor and you have a plan B. The plan B should be a job that you absolutely know you want to do, and you have a clear plan how to get there. Dropping out of med school because you want be a musician? Fair enough. How do you become a musician? Well, I am just gonna play in my basement and hope someone discovers me. Meh. You have a recording deal? Good stuff. Look at Emeli Sande.Med school is an expensive way to waste 4-6 years of your life learning a non-transferable skillset. If grads with other degrees are being scorned upon when they apply to work in restaurants how about doctor looking for a waiting job? Even for other medical related jobs like nursing you will have to go back to school so I wouldn't bank of med degree opening tons of non-hospital doors.Working as a doctor when you don't love it is not worth it. You will hate your life.That said, I think most med students go through phases when they don't like it (eg placement in a boring specialty), they can't see themselves as doctors and they feel like they should quit. That is entirely normal. Medicine includes such a wide range of jobs that you cannot love everything all the time. You just have to find a tiny bit that you love and want to do for the rest of your life.