Noble Profession? Don't Do Us Any Favors. Please.

In My Humble Opinion
41

This old conundrum. Ah.
There are those who say that medicine, nursing, child care, pastoral services, social work, all must be drawn to it: a calling.

Baloney. What you need to survive as a nurse is a caring attitude toward people, an eye for detail and a conscience-oh, and some superior intelligence wouldn’t hurt.

Please rid your mind of angel of mercy fantasies and the like-they get in the way of delivering superb care. (this is not addressed to WhyNot -but congrats on getting in to a program. I will just say that the whole is nursing a vocational degree or a professional one is a debate that just won’t die, but I digress…). And then there was the old argument that since nurses were in it for the love of it, they didn’t need to be paid a decent wage. Trust me, we’ve come a long way, baby, with a long way to go.
The docs I know work waaaaaay more than 60 hours a week. It is not uncommon for the hospitalists be on call and admit 27 pts in one night to different hospitals in my chain, for one example. For this to be bearable, some liking or dedication to the profession is needed, but a calling? Not so much.

In picking my doctors, I look for board certs, a friendly manner, a willingness to deal with a knowledgeable and outspoken pt (me) and decent office staff. This last one is much more important than perhaps is realized. There are many, many offices out there that play a game I call, “You Can’t Speak to Doctor”. and it’s never “the” doctor, always, just “doctor” with these women. Drives me nuts, but again I digress.

I haven’t had much need for a lawyer, but I would rather have one who knew the law and could communicate it to me, rather than one who is mesmerized by some abstruse and arcane point of legalese.

42

You’re viewing it as either/or. Either you love your job and want to live at the office, or you hate it and want “out”. Buying a lottery ticket does not indicate anything about your happiness in life. I’m sure even Oprah Winfrey daydreams about having a trillion dollars instead of just a measly billion. The grass is always greener on the other side.

And even though Dangerosa put it a little bit more bluntly than I would have, what she said is true. Who wouldn’t feel passionate about their children and home? I think this kind of passion is different than the passion one has for an outside-the-home career. Someone who lands in their “dream” job is a lucky person…most of us have to search awhile before we even get close. In contrast, motherhood isn’t a job that you exactly search for (for most people, that is). It’s one you create for yourself, and one that is much more self-serving (no offense intended) than a typical outside-the-home gig.

I think all of us, at one time in our life, have thought about what it would be like having our own business. Our own self-sustaining, life-fulfilling “baby”. I view stay-at-home motherhood as kind of the same thing, except you’re talking about real babies. By definition, you have to have passion to create and maintain your “baby”. But not all of us should or can create such an opportunity for ourselves, either because we can’t afford it or because we aren’t good at it. So we’re “stuck” settling with the lesser offerings of the world, where you’re expected to put in extra effort not because you love what you’re doing, but because you’ll be fired if you won’t. Again, a person waiting for passion to kick in before they get themselves in high gear is just fooling themselves. If any passion is required in life, it’s the passion for work in general.

Sorry to sound so cynical.

43

I’m another person who doesn’t hate their job, but sure as hell doesn’t view it as a calling. I’d rather sit on my ass all day and do whatever, but who’ll pay me for that. Since I have to work, it might as well be something that I’m decent at, that pays me a decent living and that I don’t actively hate. Like 90% of the population*, I view my job as a means to an end. The end being a comfortable lifestyle.

  • This statistic is completely made up, and I just pulled it out of the air.
44

Really, really interesting stuff. Some days I just love the Dope - even if (or particularly when) my point of view gets a serious thrashing.

The reason I brought the mothering part into it is that I’ve been surprised at how I need to treat it as a “job”, not just a passion; loving one’s children isn’t anywhere near sufficient. Raising small children IS a matter of learned skills. Which rather supports the “distance” argument some of you have made. I’m fortunate that I happen to really enjoy the work - I know SAHMs who don’t. It’s completely independent from loving one’s kids.

anu-la 1979, I thoroughly enjoyed your description, even if you burst my bubble.

Dangerosa, interesting that you chose art as your example – I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it to you before, but I’m an artist. I purposely waited until I figured out how to make some money at it before having kids (took me 20 years; I’m a little slow). So yeah, if I had to feed 'em on my own, I could do so without being miserable. I love art – OTOH, I’m passionate about music.

These arguments are compelling. Looks like I need to change my opinion.

45

I am not trying to be mean or bitchy fessie. I think that any doctor or lawyer fully needs to treat their client with the utmost of respect. I have little tolerance for service professionals who don’t. I just think you’re fighting a losing game if you’re trying to figure out who is in it for the love of the game and who isn’t.

Believe me, my sister is an excellent doctor, better than I am as a lawyer. She listens, really listens to people. She has zero doctor-tude, doesn’t judge people whatsoever. Aside from the fact that she got excellent grades & board scores, her clinical evaluations based on her interaction with actual human beings are consistently extremely high. I would much, much rather have her or someone like her as a physician than an asshole with a god complex who followed his true calling. The fact that she turns off her brain and spends her free time talking about Vogue and purses doesn’t really bother me.

To let you know, I have really really sensitive skin and am allergic to tons of stuff. As a kid my parents got me an appointment with a really famous Harvard derm. He made me cry and told me nothing would ever solve my issues. When I went back to my regular derm (a mere Tufts grad according to the asshole derm), she made me feel good, told me we would work on controlling the allergic reactions. She also completely cured and controlled my problems. This is a chick who has FREELY admitted to me and my sis that she only went into medicine because her parents pushed her. Yet, she is a phenomenal doctor. I don’t know whether Harvard went into the job because he wanted money or wanted to save lepers. I do know he was a fucking awful ass and I’m sad I was too young to bother complaining.

I perform my job with care because it’s my duty as someone who works. I treat my clients with empathy because it’s my obligation as a service professional and also, I don’t want to live life as a jerk. The fact that I have no emotional tie to being a doctor vs. a CPA vs. a lawyer is neither here nor there for what I feel is a responsibility to do my best no matter what I chose. I may joke a lot but I didn’t get to where I am by being incompetent.

46

I never had a calling. Unless you want to count “being morally and financially independent, able to make my own choices”.

So, why did I go into Chemical Engineering?

  1. I knew that the degree of financial independence I wanted required a college degree.
  2. In Spain, putting yourself through college is almost impossible. Putting yourself through college for a technical major is absolutely impossible, period. I knew perfectly well that I’m best suited for technical stuff.
  3. It was in the very-short list of Majors My Parents Were Willing To Pay For; Chemistry was in my list of “stuff that doesn’t bore me to death”.
  4. The only college where I could study it was far away enough to not have to go home and to the ironing every weekend, as well as to avoid “surprise” visits from Mom. For plain Chemistry this was not the case.

So, not really the right reasons at all no. But before the first year of college was over, I knew that 90+% of the kinds of jobs for which my degree would qualify me were jobs I could be happy doing. I have had jobs with lousy bosses; jobs with lousy HR departments; jobs where I was asked to do illegal things… but I’ve never had a job where I didn’t like the job description. I’ve had jobs I wasn’t good at, but hey, it happens to be a job that was in my parents’ Even Shorter List Of Things They Wanted Me To Do (I’m a good tutor but a bad teacher).

So, what should I have done, wait until I got my “calling” and play the lottery meanwhile?

47

My mother-in-law is a wonderful person. But she is a “true calling” artist. She follows HER muse. She would be just as critical as your “figuring out how to make a living at it” as you were originally of people who pick medicine as a profession because its expected and not a calling.

She sells her stuff, but she doesn’t make stuff with an eye towards to market. I would think that she would believe that cheapens the art.

48

There was nothing mean or bitchy about your posts - you were pissed off at first, but that’s perfectly OK. Really, this is just another example (for me) of coming here with a set of beliefs and having them challenged by interesting people writing interesting posts. That’s what’s fun. I don’t feel “shouted down”; I think it’s important to examine one’s beliefs in order to keep growing. Incrementally, y’know :wink: .

Dangerosa yep, I’m quite familiar with that conundrum. I figured out (as has your MIL, no doubt) that (unless you’re particularly lucky) making any kind of consistent money selling “muse” work is itself a huge job.

What inspires an artist may or may not be meaningful to 99% of shoppers - finding that 1% is tough. Locating and going to art shows and galleries takes time; finding the ones attended by people who happen to like your work and have the means to purchase it takes time and some luck; and framing drawings and paintings to make them “show-ready” is either very expensive or very time-consuming, depending on where you put your energy.

Creating more work that will reach that same 1% can be extremely limiting, but every marketer knows it’s always cheaper to sell to known clients vs. finding new ones.

And if 80% of what you create HAS no audience (as far as you’re able to discern) then your cost of goods for the 20% that DOES sell is enormous, and the price of the work needs to support it in order to remain profitable, which limits one’s audience to people willing to pay more. The competition is a lot stiffer among artists trying to sell $2,000 work vs. $200 work. That was what got me - sure, I can sell the 2 best pieces I do all month (that I enjoyed making) for a couple hundred bucks each; but if you’re going to make any money you have to be able to sell what you do on a regular basis. Not just your very best work.

Fortunately for me, I happened to find out one day that I can draw good portraits, very quickly, and that I enjoy doing it. I figured the audience for that was a lot bigger, consistently, than for anything I might happen to find visually stimulating and worthy of painting. It’s tremendous fun sharing my creative process with people who watch me work, and I love being able to sell pieces to a wide range of people, including those who’d never consider spending $200 for a painting, but who can afford a $10 portrait of their child.

Anyway, just thought I’d share all that b/c probably art-making is mysterious to some people. I thought it might be amusing to see the number of pragmatic issues that come into play. I read somewhere that 90% of people who graduate with Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees have left the field within 5 years of finishing school. I wish those kids knew that for most artists who are making a living, it’s not about “talent”, it’s about marketing.

49

But can’t you see that that is the other side of what you are criticizing? Everyone needs to make choices about what they do that operate on an internal and an external level for you - artists AND doctors AND SAHMs. If you are lucky, you will find what you do to be really fullfilling on an internal level (passionate, I think you are calling it) and to be fullfilling on an external level - i.e. you make money from it, you get status doing it (like doctors and lawyers), you meet the expectations of others.

50

Oh yeah, you’re right; I thought I said I was wrong? I just thought lawyers, and doctors particularly, existed on a higher plane. It’s so much more difficult for them to complete their education and certifications, and so expensive. Plus nothing I do is life-or-death. I always figured a person would HAVE to be passionate about it to get through those barriers and take on the risks.

51

You did, I was just being grumpy about letting go for some reason.

52

Well, that mythology exists because lawyers and doctors created it. It does, after all, insulate your recommendations from critique, especially from annoying clients who ask too many questions. I find people who cling to that mystique as though it’s anything but self-serving propoganda to ease interaction and gain the upperhand, to be somewhat tiresome, naive and full of themselves. To truly believe that being a lawyer or doctor makes you ever-so-much-more-special-and-noble than anyone else, or that you actually exist on a higher plane, is the saddest thing ever. Although, we do need these people for our marketing.

That said, I think almost every lawyer or doctor pulls it out at some point or the other to get what they want. Also I don’t even think of it as a doctor-lawyer thing. It’s a pretty basic human trait.

To sum up personally:

law as a field: mildly interesting, some subjects more than others
law as practice: dullsville but can pay reasonably, more or less depending on how much time you’re willing to put in and who you want to work for
food, alcohol, fashion, travel, swarthy men and books: very engrossing
family: gives me the will to live

53

Bwahaha - perimenopause is a bitch, eh?! :wink:

54

oops, sorry anu-la; that was for my pal Dangerosa.

55

I consider myself lucky that my passion, poetry, is so far out of mainstream that there’s no temptation to try to make money at it. It’d be like trying to make money picking your nose, or singing in the shower, or eating weird things out of the fridge.

56

Thanks for understanding…

57

In most countries, doctors and lawyers don’t need more schooling than, say, biologists or accountants - yet they still get the same mystique. Like anu-la pointed out, it’s just “marketing”.

In Spain, most classes have Pass at 50%. My college, at 60%. When some of my classmates complained about this, a professor answered “would you want a surgeon who kills half his patients? No you don’t. Now consider this: if the engineer who designed the gas deposits at the entrance to Barcelona had screwed up, we’d be having another Bhopal, not just one measly corpse :p” (that professor never saw the point in seriousness, except for grading). My SiL is a GP and every time she gets on her high horse about how important her work is, I think of that professor and of all the times I’ve handled explosives - with utmost care.

58

All things being equal (and, of course, they never are) I would rather have my doctor or lawyer consider her profession a calling. People who deeply care about the work they do tend to be better at it and try to be better still, assuming the basic skills and aptitude are there.

I didn’t really consider the law a calling when I went into it, but over time I’ve come to think it is. I swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. I’m subject to ethical rules that plumbers, hairdressers and Elvis impersonators aren’t (no offense meant to any of them). When I worked for a branch of Legal Aid, I helped battered women get protection orders and people who’d had their utilities wrongly shut off in the dead of winter get their power turned back on. As a prosecutor, I helped victims of crime tell their stories and did my best to see that bad guys got put away; I also dismissed lame cases against people who were demonstrably innocent. Now, as a magistrate, I try to see that justice is done, deciding who gets what in civil cases, and who should be fined or go to jail for hurting other people, in criminal cases. I like my job very much and think the law is an amazing human construct, “Reason free from Passion,” as Aristotle wrote.

For me, it’s a calling. For many, it isn’t. So it goes.

59

Nava,

Your professor would get along well with one of mine, teaching undergraduate chemical engineers Plant Design.

First day of class "I want you all to die . . . several decades from now surrounded by your friends and family in a nice, clean, well-lit room. As opposed to dying in an explosion caused by our incompetance, dying of poison or cancer caused by carelessness about emissions, dying alone or in prison because of incompetence or corruption . . . "

The list went on. One got the distinct impression that he didn’t want us dying in a manner connected to our professional lives as engineers.

60

Forgot to add, FWIW, I’m part of an office pool which regularly buys lottery tickets. A waste of money, I suppose, but as the New York Lotto used to say, “Hey, you never know!”