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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Good to get some perspective as a pampered American, thanks for sharing. I definitely want to go back to London as an adult and see it for myself. Haven't been impressed with NYC but I've heard London is much better.

I'm curious, why did you choose the UK over the US? Is it just easier to get in from India?

The primary issue is that the USMLE is a much larger pain to get through, as well as the mandatory residency eating up 5 to 7 years of my life, with a shit work-life balance to boot. You would literally make more on minimum wage at McDonald's once you take into account the 80 hour work weeks. And there's 15k international applicants fighting for 4k seats bookmarked for them, so just passing the USMLE is hardly sufficient.

In contrast, once I'm done with the PLAB for the UK, I can practice right away, and pursue specialization at my leisure. The work-life balance is better too, although the pay is significantly worse.

I feel like that's the right trade-off for me, though I must admit I have been eyeing the USMLE of late haha

Hey that makes a ton of sense. As someone who has worked in a high-paying, stressful career for the better part of a decade, I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. I'm actively working to move into a lower paying but less stressful field. Of course, if I had been making peanuts during that time I may feel differently. Who knows.

You can always come visit the US for a bit and have high status as a foreign doctor. Especially if you have a British accent on your English.

I hope your new career works out!

And of course, the pay does get better, after my specialization I'll be making ~120k USD, which is a perfectly respectable salary, even if it's half the median income for a US counterpart. That certainly affords a few weeks spent on a balmy beach in SoCal.

(Albeit I think I already have a great accent, women think it's sexy, and it absolutely doesn't sound Indian. People who only know me via voice chat often thought I was Nordic or American for some reason haha)

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