I'm in the wrong job

I was talking to one of the interns tonight about his career plans and was surprised to find that he was acutally doing a 2 year internship as opposed to one year. I asked him why and he said that he had done a dental degree and had gone into medicine so that he could do Max-Fax. He was taking 2 years to do the intership so that he could continue to work a few dental shifts.

I guess that's reasonably common so I didn't think much of it but as the converstation progressed I found out that he no longer wanted to do Max-Fax and was content to stay in Dentistry but was going to finish his internship in Medicine anyway so that he could also put MBBS on his business card. Again, that's fair enough. But I then asked why he was still bothering to do the dental shifts if he was earning $50,000 a year being a doctor and could go back to dentistry when he had finished up his intern training? Afterall, he'd be able to do it in 1 year and get back to dentistry full-time sooner.

Well, the next bit of conversation was jaw-dropping...

It turns out he has just turned 33. He owns 2 private practices and is about to open a 3rd so needs to be involved with them. He actually only works 3 HALF days in dentistry and is earning a staggering $500,000 per year!!!!!!!!!!

ON MY GOD!

Here's me thinking that he could have a cruisy life as an intern for a year on fifty grand and yet by working an extra 12 hours per week he is earning "half a mil" as he put it.

One of the other doctors asked him, "Why don't more doctors do dentistry instead of medicine" and he said, "Because they are stupid!".

Quite right I think. He did also say that if anyone ever tells him that they are thinking about going to do medicine he tells them to do dentistry first and then if they still are interested in medicine to do the 2 year graduate medical course. That way they can still earn a good income while studying medicine and then they can decide at the end which they prefer. He also pointed out that it's not really possible to do it the other way round.

They worst thing is he's actually a really good intern and much as I wanted to hate him after that converstation he's a really nice guy so I just couldn't. Things changed at midnight when we both left together - me on my bicycle and him in his Mercedes SL500!