[roentgen]

True, but I knew about the lifestyle when I picked radiology, and it is a very hard residency to get. There are others with a similar lifestyle, like Dermatology, Ophthalmology, and Radiation Oncology. Guess what? They are the hardest residencies to get into when you finish medical school.

I should make clear why I'm replying in this thread. The world needs good doctors, and I want bright and ambitious readers of this site to know that there is a potential upside.

[kyro]

I know this is off-topic, but I figured I'd take the opportunity to ask:

As a medical student who aspires to enter radiology and ultimately own imaging centers, like you, what advice can you offer that'd help me and other HN-med students position ourselves to be appealing candidates for a radiology residency?

[roentgen]

I don't know any secrets. It's hard to get a radiology residency. You need good grades. I don't think research experience matters. It also helps to be somewhat normal. The people interviewing you for residency have to be willing to sit next to you for four years, so if you're a "closet case" they might pass on you, even if you look good on paper.

[larrys]

"and ultimately own imaging centers"

Contact the MD here for advice:

http://upper-dublin-mri.com/aboutus.aspx

A nice guy, he was glad to help when I was thinking of starting up an imaging center. (The upshot from the meeting is that you have to have a tie in with a hospital and be aware that the hospital could end up doing the same in house etc. He's a businessman and a MD and would have profited from the association so I believe the advice was honest. Of course it's only one data point out of many you will collect.)

[kyro]

Thanks, I appreciate it!

[nandemo]

Meta-comment: how is it possible that 2 reasonable, informative comments from roentgen are being downvoted?

[larrys]

I didn't down vote it but I suspect that it's

"Medical school was easy"

"went out drinking"

"partying two or three nights a week"

"did well with the ladies"

"get by on four hours of sleep"

"nurses were much more responsive to my advances"

"busy but always had time for each other"

"make over 800k a year".

"ultimate job security"

"tremendous resource for my family"

"easy to get screwed by the medical system...won't happen to me or mine"

"not a risk taker".

Did I miss anything?

[roentgen]

Sorry, but I wanted to be completely honest. There were a few guys like me in my medical school. There needs to be a counterpoint to the doom and gloom reports of "no life" and "living hell".

[krschultz]

(Not a med student, but I double majored in two different engineerings so I had a pretty tough road)

Honestly I think people over rate how difficult school is.

I was definitely in the camp of 'it's so fucking hard, I have no life, it's horrible' etc etc etc. And I'm a smart guy. Guess what, when I actually went through and figured out how much time I was spending working, it wasn't that much. If you clear out the procrastination and bullshit and just sit down and work hard while you are working, it's not bad.

Then you actually have free time.

I struggled with this for years, but working at 50% effort for twice as many hours is a horrible way to go about things because you end up living a miserable life.

At my graduation they announced the valevictorian. It was one of my friends. We had no idea. He never talked about grades. He never bitched about work. He went out drinking nearly every day of the week. He spent a lot more time chasing women than chasing grades. But when he went to the library to work, he worked.

Remember, 6 hours a day of hard work is worth a lot more than 12 hours of half assed work, and thats what he did. That leaves 18 hours a day to enjoy yourself.

[larrys]

"but working at 50% effort for twice as many hours is a horrible way to go about things because you end up living a miserable life."

For how long? The years of college and graduate school?

Misery is not working hard enough and then ending up being one of those people unemployed in later years. (Which I agree can happen to anyone obviously.)

"6 hours a day of hard work is worth a lot more than 12 hours of half assed work"

True. But you will never be able to work as long and as hard as you can when you are young. The fun comes later. And once you have a family and kids all bets are off as far as how much you can work.

Look different things are important to different people.

But in life (as in entrepreneurship) you never know the thing that you do that will eventually benefit you. You have to learn and do as much as you can. I can trace things now that are of great benefit today that I did 15 years ago by foregoing a summer and actually summers of fun.

It's easy to look back (even roentgen at 800k) and say "look it all worked out for me and I was able to party". But we don't really have much data to support that strategy (an outlier as pointed out by verisimilitude) and in fact it doesn't really make sense that you can put in half the work and do AS WELL as putting in more of an effort without completely wearing yourself down.

[verisimilitude]

Thank you. However, statistical outliers (you) don't make strong counterpoints.