I have been fighting with my fear of posting this question because I’m afraid of the answer. I am a single dad, I work two jobs and am in school full time. I also have shared 50/50 custody of my son. I know that med school is a full time job, but If I had full custody of my son how flexible are the schools with situations like that? Also are there any resources for that kind of situation? Any personal stories?
Thanks for the input everyone 
That would be very specific to the school. How old is the son?
My school treats us like employees for many things, but the availability of child care is not one of them. Most of our classes are not mandatory and are recorded. However, we do have some mandatory events as well, and those tend to last for a few (average 4) hours at a time. We can get excused absences from those, but they’re frowned upon unless emergencies pop up.
I think it really boils down to how independent the child is. A teenager would probably be less of an issue, for lack of a better term, than someone who required constant care or monitoring. I started school with just a 2 year old, and I don’t think there’s any way that I could have handled that on my own. You are not me, and maybe you could handle it. If you have family or the ability to hire another caretaker, that would be a whole different situation.
Yeah@Kennymac wrote:
That would be very specific to the school. How old is the son?
My school treats us like employees for many things, but the availability of child care is not one of them. Most of our classes are not mandatory and are recorded. However, we do have some mandatory events as well, and those tend to last for a few (average 4) hours at a time. We can get excused absences from those, but they’re frowned upon unless emergencies pop up.
I think it really boils down to how independent the child is. A teenager would probably be less of an issue, for lack of a better term, than someone who required constant care or monitoring. I started school with just a 2 year old, and I don’t think there’s any way that I could have handled that on my own. You are not me, and maybe you could handle it. If you have family or the ability to hire another caretaker, that would be a whole different situation.
He would be almost 10 if I get in when I’m planning on it. I was just curious. Thanks, I just hadn’t heard of anyone who’s done t and was wondering if any med student had any peers who were in that situation.
We have quite a few parents in my class, but none of them are single parents and only one of them is female.
It really depends on what type of free/paid support network you have. It’s definitely possible, but I won’t lie and say it’s going to be easy. At least for me, med school is like having a 12 hr/day job with overtime on the weekends.
I have a 5 month old daughter and my wife works full time, and I have a lot of classmates with young children, some with 2 or 3. All of them are married though.
The vast majority of lectures are not mandatory attendance at my school and I actually prefer to watch the recordings so that works for me, but I still have a lot of time that I need to be able to study relatively uninterrupted, and I can’t imagine attempting that without my wife (and our very awesome babysitter). My school was amazing about granting excused absences for when my daughter was born, and for the doctors appointments that mom & baby needed to attend shortly thereafter. I haven’t pressed my luck any further and make sure that well child visits are scheduled during times that I don’t have mandatory classes or whatnot.
If the baby gets sick and my wife can’t stay home with her I’m reasonably certain my school would excuse me from things for a few days depending on what I would be missing, but probably not a whole lot above and beyond that. Med school is incredibly intense, and you will need to be able to dedicate a lot of time to it. On the flip side, a 10+ year old is not an infant or toddler, so I would imagine you will have a lot more leeway with him entertaining himself and whatnot. Additionally, if memory serves childcare is like the one thing that can increase your cost of attendance for loans if you need…in case a quarter million dollars isn’t enough debt for your medical degree.
All of that said, I don’t think it would be a good idea to attempt medical school as a single parent without having an amazing support system in place. If you get in and it turns out you can’t hack it (for whatever reason) you won’t likely get another chance, and will have a lot of debt to boot.
Thank you everyone for the replies!!!
I answered this question on this week’s OldPreMeds Podcast (coming out tomorrow 9/21)! Check it out at http://www.oldpremeds.org/subscribe