[ReallyAnonymous]

48 yo surgeon here - be careful, bc without board certification, you'll limit yourself to who will let you work in their clinic. You're getting paid for residency, just do two more years, get your FP / int med certification.

As an aside, I went to UNC Chapel Hill 1992-1996 and it cost $2k/year tuition. Now it's $20k. We've had a shift in attitude in this country of "why am I paying for something that benefits someone else," but it's going to bite us in the ass down the road as intelligent / hard working people say "why should I accumulate debt to work that hard? I'll just choose something else."

General Surgery and OB/Gyn have gone from being the hardest residencies to get, to now only requiring you graduate from medical school. The hours and the pay are the reason. Orthopedic surgeons get $1000 to put a scope in a knee and scrape a little whereas general surgeons get $400 to take out an appendix in the middle of the night. Ortho is hardest residency to get.

I was top 25% of my class and if I tried to become a surgeon 10 years earlier, I wouldn't have. Most older surgeons were top 1% of their class. My senior partner was, and man is he super smart. Anyway, I still love my job, but the hours suck (80/week). Society benefits from my service (returning sick people to the workforce) and taxes I pay ($200k / year). Not too bad return on investment, imo.