Congrats on getting into med school!
Thanks! Lifelong dream that I had lost sight of for a few years.
Classes are generally 8-4 Monday-Thursday and 8-noon on Fridays, with some variation here and there. Every lecture is recorded and posted online with the professors personal notes included for review and I've heard from a number of current student say that many people don't go to lecture at all. Personally, I know myself and know that I will benefit much more from being there in person and having the opportunity to ask questions. However, with everything being posted online I can also have the flexibility to stay home when it's necessary without fearing getting behind.
Re: commuting---I'll fortunately be going against most traffic and it's about the easiest 50 miles you could imagine, our house is half a mile from the same interstate that I'll stay on for 48 miles where I'll get off and be on one road to arrive at school 2 miles and 4 stoplights later. Gas is going to be a bummer for sure, my plan is to sell my old beat up pick up truck I currently drive and get an old beat up Civic or equivalent for better gas mileage. I'm planning to use that drive time to relisten to lectures, focusing on the classes I'm having a harder time with.
I'm anticipating my schedule will be leaving the house at 7am, generally home about 5, spending the evening playing with my daughter until she goes to bed around 7:30, then studying a couple more hours. Rinse and repeat.
We live in a pretty cheap area, our mortgage is only $550/month and rent would generally be more than that if we sold the house and moved. We should be able to get by on her salary after making some small changes, we'll have to decrease her retirement contributions a good bit (while completely getting rid of mine of course) and cancel our phone plan which I'm dying to do anyway, just locked in to contract for a few more months. The best case scenario is I only have to take out student loans for the cost of tuition and fees (about $20k/year). Well, the
best case scenario is I would get some sort of financial scholarship but those are few and far between and my grades/scores definitely don't stand out among med students.
I think the most important thing to remember through med school and residency is to remember not only how hard it will be for you, but how hard it will be for your family as well.
This has definitely been a joint decision from the beginning when I first started reconsidering the idea of going back. She's very supportive but I've also been trying to be very honest about how much of my time and energy it will take. She seems to be thinking it'll be like going back to the college days with loads of free time, which is obviously not going to be the case. On the same token, I definitely have no intention of being an absent father so I'm going to be making sure I allocate time for my family.
Don't fall into the trap of relying on future income to pay your current expenses. I had friends who took out loans during residency and bought BMWs with it.
That is insane. And probably a trap that I would've fallen into if I hadn't ever worked full-time before going to school. I know what it's like to earn and get by on $30k/year so even earning as little as $100k as a physician will provide more than I'll ever need.