So proud

I'm so proud of podiatry that I now cringe slightly when I tell someone what I do.

I'm so proud when my best friend (in jest) says, "so that's what you're calling yourself these days, huh?" when I answer the phone with Dr. ####.

I'm so proud that I have only one drug rep who calls on me out of ignorance despite the fact that I've been in the same place for more than 3 years.

I'm so proud that the foreign medical schools will not honor any of my podiatry classes.

I'm so proud that, despite my excellent grades and social skills, I ended up matching with a worthless PPMR, making it nearly impossible to earn a living.

I'm so proud of a profession that mostly cuts toenails and calluses for "patients".

I'm so proud to have wasted untold hours in school listening to the bogus crap theories about orthotic control.

I'm also proud of the untold hours I wasted in school learning about surgery and surgical principles not knowing that I may never get a chance to do any of it.

I'm so proud of the BS externships that I paid for, receiving little and sometimes nothing in return.

I'm exceptionally proud, too, of the innumerable hours I spent absorbing plastic molecules through my kiester in my 3rd year, listening again and again to endless lectures on pointless things.

I'm proud of the fact that, as a student, I did not see a single patient in a hospital (save the approximately 6 times I rounded with a real doctor and observed him speaking with them for about 2 minutes).

I'm truly proud of the several instructors who asked time and again "do you guys need to know this?"

I'm proud of the fact that since I had absolutely no hospital experience before I started my PPMR, I knew nothing about hospitals when confronted with truly sick people.

I'm proud of the failure of established pods to give back to the students, schools and profession

I'm proud of the first job I was offered straight out of residency, which boiled down to fraud (I passed).

I'm also proud of the Mickey Mouse journals in podiatry

But, what makes me most proud of podiatry is, since the future is so bleak and my income so unstable, I have to find a different career.

Thanks podiatry