The Cost Of Stupid Life Decisions

For People Trying To Talk Down Free Education 

Life's weird in the tricks it plays. I got free education at tertiary for a time. I did two and a half years of med school and quit, back in the mid-80s. I realised half way through my first clinical year that I wasn't exactly cut out to help people; I also realised I was ideologically at odds with my colleagues, and refused to change my views. It was enough to drive me out the school. Because med school in those days really crammed their hours, in the two and a half years I was there, I would've spent about as much time as a normal Bachelor of science in those days. I have nothing to show for those days except that which I retained from things I learned. That's the way it goes with most education, I guess.

Still, I don't regret quitting because if you have anything else to do in life, you probably should pick that over being a doctor. Medicine, more than any other profession I've observed, should be practiced by those who cannot - and will not - do anything else. Conversely, if there's a choice to do anything other than being a doctor, you should do it because doctor-ing requires a certain single-mindedness and an understanding of that single-mindedness that allows one to be a good doctor. All of which is to say, if you're not a good doctor, then there's no point being a doctor.

When it came to quitting, I had to go talk to the student officer, who was alarmed and appalled because it took him completely by surprise that somebody would quit half way through the course. Most people who quit, quit early. Nobody waited until third year in the dead middle of the course. What he didn't know was that I had considerable parental pressure to be there. He didn't exactly make it easy. He berated and insulted me, and he resorted to putting a money value on it. He told me my time had cost the government $300,000, and I was pissing that down the drain.

I still remember the look on his face, flushed red, practically yelling at me. He was in his forties, horn-rimmed glasses and white shirt and dark blue tie. He looked like a character straight out of the early seasons of 'Mad Men'. I remember thinking, "What has that $300,000 to do with with me now?"

It was the faculty's 'opportunity cost' in investing in me instead of another candidate who might have wanted to really be there. For me, it was an expensive bill I ran up on some tab for having to figure out what I wasn't cut out to do. He was trying to pin it on to me as a reason for guilt and the need to stay. I wonder if he'd thought through the ramification - that even if I'd stayed, I wouldn't practice medicine, so the next $300,000 the faculty would spend on me would be good money after bad, one huge sunk cost. I didn't exactly think about things in those terms then, but I recall thinking, "how's it going to help anybody - me, him or the faculty - if I stayed on?"

I imagine that he didn't get free education under Whitlam's reforms. So he was appalled that I would walk out. I didn't get it at the time, because I was an entitled little shit; but it was a lot more complicated than that. I was failing. I was failing because I missed time from an ankle injury; I then had a bad bout of flu and missed exams, and then got penalised. The faculty seemed to delight in telling me I had blown it. I had just had a bad breakup and was totally messed up. I was not interested in the career let alone in helping sick people, I had discovered in the hospital wards. If I had to repeat the year, I was going to drop into the year that was doing a 6 year Medical course, which would mean I would be at the faculty for 7 years. That was 7 years for a degree that I knew I wasn't going to use. If I were going to get out, then I just had to get out right then and not 5 years further down the track, just for the piece of paper. (and I look back and shudder because in the end I'd finished my 3year AFTRS degree roughly around the time I would have graduated, with a 1year stint at the ABC as well).

To this day it remains one of the most important decisions of my life. Because of that decision, I got the most important life education in the things that followed. It is unfortunate that it took the faculty $300,000 to find out I wasn't going to be any kind of doctor. It reminds me of 'Moneyball' when they signed Billy Beane as a top draft pick and it didn't work out, although the faculty would be a bit too dense in understanding that analogy (and I would be praising myself too much in likening myself to Billy Beane). A good mark in the HSC is not 'due diligence' enough in selecting candidates for Med School. If the system is deluded in thinking this is sufficient, it gets everything it deserves.

The faculty did very badly out of it, if indeed the cost was $300,000. But they did do me over. Instead of putting me down as "withdrawn without fail" as agreed, they put me down as 'fail' - which removed any chance I would have returning to study anything else at the tertiary level under the UCAC system at the time. So the life lesson there is, "don't piss off the powerful". Since then I have been very suspicious of universities in this country as a result. I sure as hell don't buy into the self-allocated esteem these institutions hand themselves. I am still largely hostile in sentiment towards the University of Sydney and its Faculty of Medicine (may they all rot in hell). If the place was on fire, I wouldn't cross Missenden Rd to piss on it.
And even then, and even after my terrible experience at the University of Sydney, I stand for free education. Think on that for a moment!

Studying at Med School for me, was a big mistake. The mooted sum of $300,000 for that bad decision was a costly mistake, but I don't think that sum rests entirely with me. And in that sense I would posit that saddling enormous student debts is a very bad thing for society. I didn't arrive at my $300,000 decision lightly. I suffered and agonised greatly and it was in the final count that I had to push forward with it. And if the faculty punished me for it, well, that's life too. But if students are shouldered with this debt on the front end, they won't be able to make the decision I made; and I would contend it is important that people make ethical decisions when it comes to important things like this.

I have no doubt that I would have made critical errors as an uncaring, unmotivated, lousy doctor; I have no doubt I might have let somebody die on my watch by mistake or incompetence. I have no doubt that the craptacular efforts of my endeavours in medicine would have cost somebody much more than $300,000. People ought to be able to make decisions about their lives - important decisions - without getting penalised with money or encumbered with ridiculous debt. Those are the decisions that are going to contribute positively to society. No matter what the man in the horn-rimmed glasses says, you can't put a price on that. In turn, one should be very frightened of the doctor who is only there because he couldn't get out because the money was too much. I can tell you from first hand experience that most doctors are social idiots, but they are well-motivated social idiots. You wouldn't want to put your lives in the hands of anybody worse than a well-motivated social idiot.