VERY SCARED

Yes, I need advice. I am 29 yrs old and have a pretty good job. I work for Local #3 IBEW. I will have very nice retirement and have very good benefits. I am very apprehensive about leaving my job to persue my passion of becoming a doctor. I currently have 43 undergrad/liberal arts credits. How many years, if I max out my schedule(without overloading), could I finish up my B.A and med. school? Sorry to sound so “weak” but this is a big move for me. At least I don’t have a wife and kids at this point of my life and it may make it somewhat easier(right now). Thank you everyone for the support.
Beau

I know how you feel. I am 29 as well and have a great job and the benefits are wonderful. However, unlike you I have a wife and 2 kids as well as a mortgage to think about. I am scared to death. I am going for a Masters degree now that I know will translate into a promotion and much higher pay.
The way I am dealing with it is this. I will finish the Masters and take a year to study for and take the MCAT followed by applying. In the meantime, all the money that is not needed for everyday expenses is being saved. If I decide to go for it then I will. But if I see that I like my lifestyle, so be it.
Wait until you get your BA and then decide. The best thing about your situation is that you are under no pressure to decide now. Take a deep breath and just do your classes well and save your money just in case you decide to go to Medical school and get accepted to one.

Thank you.

Typically B.A. is 120 credits…so at 30-35 credits per year (a typical load) you can finish the B.A. in two and a half years. Medical School is 4 years (with a few 5 year programs out there). So you would have an M.D. (or D.O.) behind your name in 6 or so years…maybe you’d be 36-37. Residency is a minimum of 3 years (the length is dependent on the speciality and any further training you might pursue).

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Yes, I need advice. I am 29 yrs old and have a pretty good job. I work for Local #3 IBEW. I will have very nice retirement and have very good benefits. I am very apprehensive about leaving my job to persue my passion of becoming a doctor. I currently have 43 undergrad/liberal arts credits. How many years, if I max out my schedule(without overloading), could I finish up my B.A and med. school? Sorry to sound so “weak” but this is a big move for me. At least I don’t have a wife and kids at this point of my life and it may make it somewhat easier(right now). Thank you everyone for the support.
Beau


Hi Beau,
The pre-med courses(think pre-MCAT courses) are General Chemistry with lab; General Biology with lab, Organic Chemistry with lab; General Physics with lab and one semester of college math (may be Calculus, Statistics etc). Some medical schools require Biochemistry or Genetics so you have to do some internet work.
Course like Cell Biology and Human Physiology are also good MCAT prep courses. Almost no medical schools require them as undergraduate courses.
You can expect to take two years to complete the pre-med courses if you are able to take two lab courses per semester. Most folks would typically take General Chem and General Physics together leaving General Bio and Organic Chem together. The most important thing is to do well in these courses(no grade less than B+). If you find that you get one C, you have to offset that with an A.
As for your retirement, you will lose some of your benefits by getting out of the workforce. You can expect to take a minimum of six years to complete both the undergraduate coursework and medical school. If you have 43 undergraduate credits, you need to try to parlay these into some kind of undergraduate degree. This may add another year to your quest.
Most undergraduate schools will offer some kind of student health insurance at reasonable or no cost. At Howard, our student insurance was included with our tuition. It was a very good plan but at GWU, I had to purchase student health insurance for about $800 per year. It was not that great.
After medical school, you will be back into the workforce during residency. I was fortunate in that my retirement plan was transferable so I was able to start back to contributing to it when I started residency. Look into the portability of your plan.
You can also expect to make at least $125,000 per year after a medicine-type residency and at least $220,000 per year after a General Surgery residency. Things like Path, EM and Rads fall around these two with Rads being on the higher end of the scale. Even making $125,000 per year, you should be able to make enough to retire on after you pay off loans if you invest well. (Score high enough on your incoming GPA and MCAT and you can get most of your med school tuition paid with scholarships) Just another reason to do very, very well as an undergraduate.
If you can’t stand the idea of being out of the workforce for seven to eight years, you may want to re-think your decision to pursue medicine. Medicine is a very long-term goal with no guarantees on the other end. As the economy has gotten bad, the numbers of applications to medical school as tended to increase.
You may also want to ask yourself the question: What will I do if I spend two to three years preparing for medical school and I don’t get accepted? Sometimes it takes two and three tries to gain admission so be prepared with a good back-up plan that pays money.
You also need to budget some time to study for and take the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test). This usually takes at least a semester after you complete the requirements. This exam is offered in April and August. The exam is typically taken in April of the year before you will be sending your application. For example if you are planning on applying June 2004, you would take the MCAT in April of 2004 and you would enter medical school in August of 2005. You would typically begin studying for the April MCAT the summer of 2003 and into the fall and winter so that you would have plenty of time to prepare. Make no mistake, you will need to do some solid prep for this exam!
Make some decisions and get some professional financial planning assistance. Your union should provide this at nominal cost. Figure out a strategy to keep your retirement and provide health insurance during the time that you would be in school. Also figure out how to finance your education both undergraduate and medical. In this economy, a good financial planner can help you re-tool for a career change.
Glad to have you posting.

Natalie

Beau, it’s easy to find this whole prospect terrifying if you look at it as one big risk. Since you’ve got a BUNCH of steps that you’ll need to take prior to actually launching a career in medicine, I suggest that you look at this as a series of small steps. None of them is a point of no return.
You don’t need to quit your job any time soon to get your bachelor’s degree. What you could do is look into the availability of classes in your area that fit your work schedule. Take ONE class - you could start with a prerequisite, such as general chemistry, or you might consider college algebra or other math class to bring you up to speed before you tackle physics or chemistry (both have lots of algebra in them). See what you think of it. Consider whether you can see yourself immersing yourself in more classes and doing well in them. Think about whether you’re able to enjoy the class, even if it doesn’t seem very relevant to an eventual goal of medicine.
Meanwhile, see if you can find a local physician to spend a day with. See if your local college has a pre-med club or fraternity; if so, they often know of physicians willing to be “shadowed.” See if you can attend the fraternity’s meetings even if you’re not yet a student at the school, just to get more of a feel for what they’re up to. (don’t be intimidated, though - it’s almost certainly going to be mostly populated by gung-ho traditional students)
Read LOTS. There are any number of books that address the adventure of getting into medical school. Quickly perusing a few of those will help. But also look for books by physicians who’ve written about their experiences. Read a few of those. What sorts of feelings do they inspire in you? Do they whet your appetite and leave you pining for a similar experience? Do they inspire you? Make you think, “Yeah, I could do that!” These experiences could help give you the nudge you sound like you think you need. The only author whose name is instantly coming to my mind is Perri Klass but if you search for her books on Amazon, you’re likely to get LOTS of additional suggestions of “You may also like…” (sorry I’m blanking on other names!)
You’ve recognized the inclination and you’re not sure what to do with it. There are lots of “next steps” you can take without committing yourself to the whole shootin’ match. You’re YEARS away from needing to worry about stuff like loans and retirement! For right now, you owe yourself a good bit of time to really dive into this idea, explore it thoroughly, and see how it holds up as you try it on and ponder whether it fits you.

In california right now, no time to write much, but: you should do what you can to find a helpful academic advisor who can sit down with you and strategize and think about your situation specifically. Good advisors are really very helpful for making the kind of thing you’re worrying about a little more concrete, and helping you think about what kind of load you can handle over what time, and so on.
As for books, Perri Klass’s book is "A Not Entirely Benign Procedure."
Atul Gawande’s book Complications is the best medical book written in the last few years.
Oliver Sacks is always great but writes less about being a dr. and more about patients… but all of his books are great. http://www.oliversacks.com/
more soon i hope–
good luck
joe