I graduated from Medical School two weekends ago.  For those of you non-doctors imagine your college graduation plus winning the Nobel Prize and the Super Bowl.  That’s how you are treated by friends, family and people who would like you to think of them as friends or family.  The best though is the love you get from doctors…the same ones who will be treating you like garbage once residency begins. But for now it’s all good.

All the attention though attracts it’s fair share of haters and the numbers are multiplied when for whatever reason people think you don’t deserve what you’ve got or getting what you’ve got would have been harder for them.  Think Obama’s Nobel Prize or Eli Manning’s Super Bowl.

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Ok, please someone tell me I wasn’t called out because I’m going to be “just a regular” doctor making “only $150,000” minimum?  Please tell me when I made the misguided decision to read the latest post by Triforce’s lackey he had the audacity to not only let some real private stuff slip but I was called out on becoming a primary care physician.

Actually, it’s never been a better time to become a primary care physician.  And physician still doesn’t belong in the same sentence, paragraph or even document as lawyer.

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So as my vacation began to wind down I asked myself how all the overpriced coffee shops, dive bars posing as pubs and tiny bookstores with the selection you would expect from any the shelf of an eighth grader with a C average stay in business during the other 11 months and two weeks when I never deviate from the from the well-worn path between the apartment and the hospital.  The answer of course is hipsters.

So what is a hipster? A hipster is a self-righteous individual well into adulthood who rationalizes living off an income they do not generate while contributing nothing to society.  The individuals are plagued by an almost crippling insecurity and the need to validate their existence by constantly talking about their own achievements real, exaggerated or imagined.  Hipsters tend to be very selectively judgmental, priding themselves on their ability to adhere to a personal code of ethics based upon a celebration of their own appetites and a condemnation of others who prefer different vices.  They are also self-absorbed. Facebook.  Twitter. Myspace.  Need I say more?

Is it possible for a student debtor to be a hipster? Am I…a hipster? Read on to find out

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I didn’t realize this until Benito pointed it out: the difference between a market driven and an expertise driven credential. As you know I have been jaded lately and I think the root of all apathy in the medical field comes when you begin to view your daily grind as a job like any other. That was certainly part of my problem. Because I thought of it as a job like any other I assumed the degree that went with other jobs (JDs, PhDs, MAs and MBAs as opposed to MDs) were expertise driven. Doctors need MDs to demonstrate basic competence or people die. Benito then reminded me that not every job is a matter of life and death no matter how much Mike Triforce hams it up when he has a filing deadline. Here’s Benito to tell you what the differences are between credentials as part of our first 200 level class on student debt.

Hi kids. Consider this part of an effort to get back on track as near as it relates to our core mission of providing meaningful advice,insights and commentary into what affects us as student debtors. This is a 200 level commentary because it is a bit more abstract than simply factoring in the effect of taxes and interest on your monthly bottom line. This has to do with assigning a value to the education you received in order to be better informed when it comes to making a decision if the education juice is worth the financial squeeze. Read on to learn how.

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Jefferson Hospital.  I will be a resident at Jefferson Hospital starting sometime in…oh who cares.  Jefferson is in Philly and I don’t have to move.  That’s what it comes down to.  I just don’t want to move.  That’s about 20% boyfriend, 30% laziness (I get a two week vacation where everyone else has to go find a new place to live in their new city) and 50% savings.  Since my boyfriend pays the rent those savings are significant and since I have debt, they are also extremely necessary.

Remember your senior year of high school? How just didn’t care about anything? Remember your friends telling you how you passed your senior year in college in a drunken stupor and stating you don’t remember any of it because you somehow evolved past not caring? Med students hit that a little late.  See, when we were in high school and college we were on a mission, a treasure hunt for the fabled M.D.  Now we have it and we’re all thinking…this is it?

I know. I know.  You’re all thinking I’d be singing a different tune if I got a more prestigious residency.  Read on so I can tell you to go

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I don’t read much anymore but recently I read a book called Half the Sky.  Lying safe in bed waiting for my boyfriend to come home I read about girls and women who are ritualistically raped as part of a marriage proposal. I read about clinics where women routinely seek two things: abortions and AIDS treatment. In the doctor’s tool kit are 1) a crude hook and 2) what can only be described as magic charms.  I don’t see patients like that. I spend my days doing what any other pair of scrubs would have done in my place. Am I really helping anyone? And if not is it because I am in debt?

The conclusion I came to is a difficult one.

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Moonlighting. Fourth year med students have an opportunity to pick up a little extra cash by picking up a shift here or there. I myself chose to work everyday. There is a certain high to seeing your bank account swell with non-loan money. So when a classmate asked if I wanted to go to Haiti and volunteer my services I said no and didn’t think twice.

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We’ve all heard the old joke “MD stands for ‘My Decision’ “ usually told by a young doctor at the end of a long day.  Older doctors know better than to let gems like that slip unless they are only around their own kind.  There is even a lame lawyer equivalent “JD stands for ‘Just Do it’” usually told by a not so young lawyer after a doctor tells the first joke within ear shot.  Then sleeves roll up to reveal watches.  Car keys come out.  Then credit cards.   And the pissing contest begins.

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I have always felt superior to lawyers.  I say lawyers not law students because truth be told every medical student, heck every pre-med student with a decent shot at the prize, thinks of themselves as a doctor.  Recently though, as I’ve seen lawyers working in bars, shuffling medical paperwork and fighting with neighborhood kids for the opportunity to shovel driveways for $20, the feeling dissipated.  It’s like a rivalry where the other team has stank for a long, long time.  One of the reasons lawyers have been sucking it up lately is because it’s easier to open a law school than it is a daycare.  Now people are looking to do the same with medical schools [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/education/15medschools.html]

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I’m 28 and interviewing for my first job. I long since resigned myself to Debtor’s Prison, even though I didn’t pay a dime for undergrad. My debt started with my Master’s Degree a virtual pre-requisite for medical school. Then I took two years off to do research, a virtual pre-requisite for a cardiology fellowship. My mother wanted me to be a doctor. Now she reminds me every day that I am two years older than she was when I was born. My father wanted me to marry a black doctor…or a doctor…or a black guy. He blames Twilight for the pale white vampire thing. Joke’s on him though, Simon hunts vampires. Or so he jokes. I actually have no idea what Simon does. That’s a problem for after interviewing.

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