Originally Posted by
Airsupport
see. these kind of comments show how little people know about student debt for people in other professions. med school will cost you around 250k. your first year out of med school you will make about 15 dollars an hour, or around 30k a year. your stubent loan payment which is now due will be near 2000 bucks a month. after going through residency for 4 years making just over 30k for your entire stent you finally get to venture out. so lets do the math shall we. 4 years of college plus 4 years of med school plus 4 years of residency plus 2 years of specialization. hmm in 14 years you will start to finally see the rewards of the career you have chosen.
not saying its not worth it, but people on this side of the fence have no idea how it works so they say stuff like this. the rate of divorce amongst doctors during residency is about 60 percent at the school i was going to attend. they pretty much told us if we weren't married coming in to not do it till we are done. the hardships of being away from home, making little to no money, and student loan payments that are more than you bring in are just to much for some families.
oh and did i mention that pilots like to whine and complain. i think it is in our blood.
My best freind is an MD. He made squat until med school + one year, then he was paid a liveable wage. When he completes his specialty training he will be able to walk into $250-300K per year. He knows this, and it is not contingent on knowing someone, passing subjective interviews with personality/psych components, getting a job at one of only two hospitals which pay that much, or spending 12 years as a FO .
He has been working his butt off, but the system he's in has always found a way to pay him enough to live comfortably while a supporting three kids and a mostly-stay-at-home wife (like me he's a career-changer, not a kid).
The economic returns from aviation no longer match up to most real professions. You must have other reasons for going down this road. Justifying all the crap by calling it "dues-paying" is exactly the sort of self-delusional thinking that has gotten us all into this mess...and management loves self-delusional pilots.