Comment by subungual | Hacker News Reader

Comment by subungual | Hacker News Reader

I left tech ~6 years ago to pursue medical school. I'll be graduating and starting residency soon. A significant number of my classmates express regret for choosing medicine, and a lot of them fantasize about pursuing a career in tech, instead. I feel pretty well inoculated against this, having had a varied life and a collection of very different work experiences before med school.

I'm happy with my choice. My work still involves the computer, but I certainly don't spend most of my time on it. I get to interact with a wide variety of people, and sometimes I can make their days and lives a little better. My work is challenging and involves a lot of thinking and dealing with imperfect information. If I want to fold in skills gained from tech work in the future, there is no shortage of opportunities. Leaving tech for medicine was about the worst financial decision I could have made, but I would absolutely do it again. It's been a long road, but it was the right decision, I think.

I've been wrestling with this decision for a couple years now. I've slowly knocked off remaining pre-reqs, but haven't fully dived in - which would be leaving my job and becoming an MA or ED tech and doing dedicated MCAT studying.

I work for a tech company that you and your fellow classmates have no doubt used during medical school.

The massive financial hit is one of the big reasons I haven't made the jump. It doesn't feel fair to my wife to uproot our life. I always say if I won the lottery, I'd go to medical school.

Congrats on graduating and matching! I hope residency treats you well.

Great hearing from you! I think you're taking a wise approach. I inverted things from the way that you did them-- I spent a year studying for the MCAT alongside work (had taken all the prereqs 10+ years earlier as a part of my degree). I used MCAT prep as a litmus test for my seriousness about the whole thing, and after it went well I quit my job to stack up post-bac courses and tick the various remaining application boxes.

It's funny that you say that about the lottery-- my wife and I were unsatisfied in our careers and were very focused on financial independence/early retirement and had set a pretty aggressive retirement date. As we were each thinking through what we would do on the other side of retiring, I realized I'd probably make the run at med school that I'd been considering for a long time. At that point, it stopped making sense to wait.

There's no question that it's a pretty significant upheaval. Fortunately, my wife has been very supportive throughout and even encouraged me at several points to make the jump. We had to move across the country, and we've had a kid in the process. Timing with COVID ended up working out well, as we don't really have the feeling of lost time and opportunity that others seem to.

Good luck in making your decisions from here-- it sounds like you've been thoughtful and intentional about the moves that you've made, and I hope you figure out what's best for you and your wife.

I have been considering this, when I think about what I would do if I had freedom to do anything. The commitment is obviously daunting, but I am considering dipping my toes in some pre-reqs and MCAT to see how serious I would be about it.

I'm 29 now, just curious how that matches up to your timeline? Were there a good number of older students in your classes as well? Cheers and congrats on almost finishing!

Thank you! It's definitely worth dipping your toes, I'd say. I made the call to try it at 29 and matriculated at 32. There's one person in my class who is a decade older than me, another my age, and several who were in their late 20s when we started. The average age of med students is slowly climbing, and there are plenty of nontraditional students out there. I wish you success regardless of what you decide!

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