I asked my cousin (and if you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that my cousin is also a classmate of mine) this question, “If someone were to pay you to leave medical school, and you could never come back, how much money would it have to be?”
She thought for a while, and, instead of answering me with a straight answer, she asked me how much it would take for me to walk away.
I quickly replied, “$100 million.”
I’m not sure if she laughed or chuckled. My memory is a bit hazy on that part. But she said she’d probably do it for a “little less.” But upon pressing her about what “a little less” meant, I think she said $50 million. She did say, however, that she’d probably always wonder “What if?’ about staying in medical school.
Ideally someone would offer me $100 million to take and I could stay in medical school too. But if the condition was that I walk away and never return to med school… Well, I don’t think I’d have any qualms about that.
Does that make me any less of a medical student? Does it reflect poorly on me?
I wonder because I asked another classmate the same question. Her reply was a lighting-fast, “You couldn’t pay me to leave. You’d have to kick me out.”
Her answer left me speechless. Well kind of… I did manage to say, “Oh… that’s cool.”
