The problem with chasing prestige

In college, I choose my intended profession in a very superficial manner. I had wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. It was a job that was “like engineering”, it had a stable income well above the national average salary (even for physicians), and it just seemed like kind of a respectable and cool profession to be in. I didn’t really consider that orthopedic surgery was filled with mostly conservative white men, or that it was the surgical subspecialty with the highest suicide rate, or that I just didn’t really like sports that much. When you’re young, it’s easy to feel this sense of false invincibility, especially if everything up until then has gone relatively well for you. It’s a form of optimism that is a special part of youth.

But I think the problem with chasing prestige blindly is that it’s easy to sacrifice your true self in pursuit of material wealth and status. Society can be a dark place, and businesses have profits to maintain, and a culture of conformity to uphold. Your employers don’t always have your best interest at heart. Sometimes, there are reasons why jobs like orthopedic surgery or investment banking are so high paying, and I think it’s that you are selling a part of yourself for the money and to be a member of that club. I didn’t really understand that as a college student–how could I have? I didn’t realize at the time what it meant to work 80 hour work weeks, and still have to go home and study for the board exams. I wasn’t aware just how important my freedom and my hobbies–writing, reading, running–were to me, and that I would have to give all of that up to uphold an image so that I could impress the very average people around me.