Originally Posted by
CTMilller
This is an interesting thread. So many different paths taken. It just shows there are many routes to fulfilling your potential and being academically gifted is neither a sure-fire route to success or a particular blessing. Interesting to see new dimensions to familiar faces - Scum and Brin being two cases in point.
Having rather dismissed my own education as a contributing factor to any success I had in my career, I can easily make the point that a mixture of a simmering vocation and bloody hard academic training will also pay dividends - in the case of the younger of my two sons.
Luke is now 31 and did well at an international school in Singapore. He went on to the University of Bristol where he got a First in Politics and Sociology. Having done that he realized he'd been going in the wrong direction and needed to be useful to people rather than an academic (He was a little in the mould of Scum in that he'd volunteered as a crisis counselor for the university - and had actually talked somebody down off a bridge, apparently.)
He really wanted to be a doctor and set about becoming one. We were already living in the US by then and he decided qualifying there rather than the UK would make him happier. He had to bridge the gap academically since he had no real basic education in physics, biology, chemistry etc so went to a college in San Francisco (Mills) where he did a two year Post-Bac Pre-med course to make him eligible for medical school. Hard, hard slog for somebody who had leaned towards the Liberal Arts for most of his education.
He took his MCAT exams, did well and was accepted into the Medical School at the University of San Diego. Another four years of intensely hard slog with regular, life defining exams that could knock you back.
in 2018 he qualified as a Doctor and took a four year residency in Obstetrics and Gynacology (OB/GYN) at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. This is really only the beginning since you are the lowest of the low and are still learning, learning, learning.
He's now about to start his fourth year residency, has delivered something like 380 babies and performed 120 C sections and countless other surgical procedures. Doing this during the pandemic with patients in the ICU who had the virus was no joke.
He has about $300,000 of debt for his education and currently earns $56,000 a year. (His peers not in the medical profession would be earning three or four times this much.)
After finishing the residency next year, he plans do to a two year Fellowship which will making him a leading name in at-risk pregnancies. More learning and studying - though he will be creating knowledge as much as learning from others.
To me, this is what education is about and what makes it worthwhile.
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