When You Weren’t Looking, They Were Working

"In 2003, roughly 85 percent of graduates had medical school loan debts."

Surprisingly, 15% pay over 120K for their child to attend medical school. When much is given, then much should be expected back. This is the pressure the 15% are forced to live with. They are expected to outperform. In Medicine, this probably means going into a ROADS specialty. This is to pay homage to the parents who pay for their children to attain success. A recent article in the NYTimes explained,

“O, brilliant kids, I was a fool just like you. I was in my mid-40s before I properly thanked my father for his decades of hard work — paying for me to laze around in the cars he bought me, to get drunk in the frat house whose dues he paid, to spend the afternoons with my girlfriends looking at trees and rivers while Pop worked and got so anxious that he took up smoking three packs of Kents a day.

“O, brilliant kids, you get to put on the garments of the morally righteous and upstanding while your parents work — because mothers work now and always have worked — and your parents must say, ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, sir,’ to those who hire them. O, golden children, you get to talk about how you’ll never ‘sell out,’ and meanwhile your parents stay up late in torment, thinking of how they can pay your tuition. Because, brilliant kids, work (business) involves exhaustion and eating humble pie and going on even when you think you can’t. And you are the beneficiaries of it in your gilded youth.