wow, you must hate your job. ...10-years-and-200-k-kind-of-hate.
i don't have any advice except that you should probably ask a group of doctors this question too. i'm sure they'll have a different viewpoint than all the architects that respond to this. best of luck to you

ok i changed my mind i have some advice.

if you are interested in medicine (or are you considering the change for the salary, prestige, etc?) there are some kind of holistic-consulting studies wherein designers research how patient environments effect healing. As a shortcut you could get a Master's and look at that.... it'd be like... 2 years and 50k max. I don't know what the opportunities in that are like though.

i mean anything's possible if you set your mind to it. This is certainly a big change. I don't know how old you are, but 10 years and 200k is a lot of time and a lot of money, but if your truly unhappy maybe it's all worth it.

On a lighter note, I'm a victim of all the layoffs lately and I'd love to take your job if you're changing careers! lol

10 years? UW's med program is 4, with a handful of prereqs.

the issue will be falling in that 1% that gets accepted into the program.

Please disregard my comment if this doesn't apply to you.
If the salary is the issue, can studying pharmacy be a good alternative?
my cousin graduated from USC Pharm 5 yrs programs (now 6).
The job pays really well, i think. Their typical starting salary is around 90,000. My cousin enjoys 125K salary and her mercedes. I know a pharmacist doesn't look as prestigeous as a doc, but they work regular hours and enjoy dinner with their kids. One downside would be standing behind the counter all day like a clerk.

not to mention all the great painkillers you could get your hands on!

just be a nurse..... or a lab tech......

Physician's Assistant. You get to do a lot of what doctors do but you are never on call.

I began my career path towards the medical profession. I worked in a hospital for 5 years as an insurance and billing adjuster. However, knowing my long-standing passion for architecture, and my generally (what became a) disenfranchized and disillusioned stance on the medical industry, I decided to pursue architecture and went to grad school after. I haven't looked back no matter how shitty the times are.

Sure you get great paychecks, fancy cars, and all that other stuff being a doc, but for me, I feel a greater sense of belonging in this profession and that's all that matters to me. My mentors and my superiors have all proved time and again that down the stretch architecture can and will pay off. It's hard work but do a good job and we will get there.

At my new firm, one of my superiors who is one of the managing directors and has been in the profession for almost 40 years said that he had experienced layoffs, took pay cuts, and dealt with crappy situations but he held on everything turned out alright. These are the kinds of stories that I appreciate.

can you explain more?! i mean, surely there are other options, unless there is a real passsion there.

I'd make sure you have evidence that you'll be able to get through school. Architecture has schooling for everyone, from the 'nothing needed to be accepted' to the top schools. Med is a little different.

There are easier paths to making good money that could utilize some of your knowledge.

Architect Magazine had an article recently about big medical-specialty firms hiring nurses as part of their design staff, because they know hospital function better than anyone.

I think the whole "wellness design" trend is going to keep going for awhile, so there must be opportunities to combine medical care knowledge and design knowledge.

When I was in school, one professor told us all "Marry a nurse - they can always find a job."

If you can't find a job with a medical specialty architecture firm, you can probably do an LPN degree in two years, right? get some time in the trenches of medicine during this economy in which architects aren't hiring, then veer back into the design side (maybe from within, in a facilities capacity) when things pick up again?

PS Archmed, so *that* explains your name! I'd always wondered...

become a nurse. take up smoking.

sounds like a good idea, i may even consider doing this as the rest of my family are all doctors.

back to drawing the mental hospital....

Today's paper had a report on a study: 50% of primary care physicians would change jobs if they could. physicians have a very high rate of dissatisfaction with their jobs.

As drugs become more ethical and FDA changes towards a more preventative and not blanket approval of dangerous addictive drugs with side effects and we start seeing new stem cell treatments it could see better retention i imagine.

My Brother in Law quite Architecture and then went on to complete a degree in medicine. So now he works 4 days a week as a GP and builds cabins, boats, furniture in his spare time. His income is not huge low 6 figures but has parlayed the medical degree into a small practice and finds time for himself to do the things he really loves. He's also single so the hobby time is pretty high compared to those of us with family / kids, which we remind him of all the time.

123 - I think it would be helpful to go through "(salary, meaning, prestige, etc.)" one by one:

Salary - A lot of people may disagree, but in terms of stress, years to get to the position, and the risk one takes to become one I always equated a respected doctor with a principal architect. Once you're in that position, it is likely you're making some money - although more at risk. Also, perception is key. I know many contractors and engineers that think architects are making huge sums of money and vice versa, when in reality its much less dramatic in terms of take-home pay.

Prestige - See above. So far, people I've encountered have been very polar about how they see architects - They see architects as these elite creative professionals or as some guy that sits at his drafting table with his T square drawing pretty pictures. I guess my point is that true prestige is earned by individuals, not as a profession as a whole.

Meaning - In my opinion, the most important. I think meaning what you find in something or what you add to it, not what is presented to you or what others expect. Sometimes I see meaning or add meaning in the most mundane details. There is a buddhist saying "Every honest work is honourable work." Again, it is put on the individual, not the group as a whole.

How abot optometry? 4 years to start out at $90,000. My younger sister is one, I am hellajealous.

are you seriously thinking about ditching architecture for status and income? What about: choose what you ENJOY doing, and going for that? Who gives a rats' ass whether or not it will make you rich and famous?

My wife is a doctor. You don't automatically become a doctor when you graduate from med school.
Here's the process:

4 years of med school
3 years of residency. If you pursue something like internal medicine, pediatrics, gastro, etc. 3 years (But 6 years of residency if you decide to become a surgeon or other extreme specialty)
Then:
3 to 6 more years for your subspecialty fellowship. You don't need to do this, but if you want to be anything other than a family doctor treating strep throat for-fucking-ever, you will want to.
Then:
You're not quite there. If you want to be a serious doctor who makes a difference to the profession (as opposed to "merely" helping people be healthy) you'll maybe have to go to a kind of post-fellowship, where you're a clinical instructor or something. This can last from 1 year to many years.

So:
If you want a non-boring medical life where you're not just treating strep throat or doing stitches, count on 10 to 15 years of training.

Much of this will be on call every fourth night, meaning up all night every fourth night with no breaks, not even for weekends. Every fourth night for 5 or 6 years straight. The deadline doesn't come and then pass, and then you get two months until the next one, as in our profession. You pull a 36 hour all-nighter, sleep from 4 in the afternoon to 8 am the next morning then back at work, sometimes for another full week which includes another call night.

This is not a casual decision that you make just because you're bored. Most doctors love wat they do, but it's a long, tiring and expensive haul. And doctors are a particular breed. My sense is that the best ones are literally obsessive-compulsive, hyper-detail oriented, and don't really tolerate what you and I would think of as little human foibles and imperfections.

Incidentally, you'll also make low wages through your entire training. For the most part, count on a paycheck below $50,000 for the ten years of training.

But when you're done with that ten years, you'll probably triple that.

Except being a cad monkey on a piece of crap project can make one feel as if s/he is breaking that doctor's oath of First, do no harm. Stitching someone up can really only be helpful.

skillz at making models could result into skillz at pulling teeth or even skillz in cutting up ligaments (not on accident either)...hahahha

my uncle is a gum surgeon and went through 12 years of school but is making crazy bank right now. nice place/boat/cars/indoor pool/etc. and even paid me well to do some cd's for some work he was doing on his house....

Ever occur to anybody hear that changing professions and expecting to make "crazy bank" quickly and without a lot of effort is in my mind counter intuitive to those choosing Architecture as a profession in the first place. ie if your looking for easy street and crazy bank as motivation best leave the profession now. The bigger concern are the larger consequences of that thought process and partially why the economy is in the current situation, everyone too many taking the easy route, passing the buck, and approving mortgages they shouldn't have instead of saying no and telling people that they need to work harder to EARN the money to pay for that house. ( not quite that simple but you get the picture )

Too many people with too much expectation and too great a sense of entitlement doing too little.

I have a few friends and family friends that are doctors....and let me say this: If you are doing it for the love of the medical profession and the urge to help others, then go for it. But if you're doing it because the pay is good, then think again. Even though docs have high salaries, they have lots of extra costs and VERY expensive liability insurance to pay for which in the end, make it not as lucrative as you may think. Add long hours, constant calls from patients, and lack of sleep, you may have gotten yourself into something you may not have expected....just like the architecture gig.

To borrow the line of an esteemed archinecteur my best friend/future wife is a doctor and can say this with much accuracy. It takes 4 years for school + 2 for internship + 2 more for residency before you start making money more comparable than architect. It will likely be another 5 years to start making enough money to handle rent/mortgage and living expenses and student loan repayment

and you've got a pre-med prerequisite as well, ouch

But I am not discouraging, I would like to say I heard about this one guy...

it's 6 yrs of residency if you want to become a surgeon... 3 yrs for family medicine. that's what my cousin and her husbands are working on now. they make 50,000/yr work 24/7, and have to pay off their half million loans (combined).

Medicine sounds like it has the same loooong hours as architecture, but with added blood, vomit, pain and death!!

To be honest, two years of CAD-monkeyship seems to be a pretty standard experience. I did three or four years of fair;y menial work before landing a very interesting and challenging project.

One of my college friends went immediately into the 5-year medicine course after completing 5 years of architecture. She is certainly enjoying her new studies (the social life, not the blood, vomit etc.) but you need parents with very deep pockets to be able to spend all that time in college, without first giving your original career path a chance.

Anyone else notice that our original poster is nowhere to be found?


Is there a doctor in the house?

So ok let me just get this straight with regards to salary though,

Say you're just starting out with a M.Arch, having obtained a bachelors in an unrelated field, you graduate 3-4 years and start earning 40,000 upon graduating, gradually go up to 50,000 - 60,000? as you earn your IDP for 3-5 maybe more years. (equivalent to residency years)

or go into medicine for 4 years (if no science courses add another 1-2 year for prereques) and upon graduating earn 50,000 while working as a resident.

Once finishing the IDP for Architecture and getting a llicense after 3-5 years, if done fast, what salary can you expect? like 80,000? if you're lucky, the market is good and you're business savvy and become a principal/owner, you can earn 100,000 or above. Not guranteed, dependant on hustling ability.

And after 3 years residency (for GP) you get paid like >100,000 guaranteed for life.

Pretty much equivalent no? Well depending on what kind of doctor you want to be and for me GP is fine, I like that dude that works 4 days a week and does building hobbies on the side. And there's more guaranteed income in medicine, job security. I don't know trying to weigh options here myself.

I've had interests in both. Human bodies are fascinating so are buildings (both have similiarities i think).

to be honest yeah, if i did win the lottery I'd probably do architecture over medicine. But I didn't win the lottery and though money is not a big issue with me (I'm fine with middle class income) job market wise, and constant hustling for jobs is not that appealing. Medicine is pretty straight forward on the other hand, you either know it or you don't, and get paid for your knowledge (not that this isn't the case with arch. just that arch is more nebulous involving marketing yourself, schmoozing and the like, which is probably involved in medicine but earning potential isn't as dependant on it) both seem to be a lot of hard work. which I like.

any words of wisdom with regards to those salary projects for each career above and the comparison of med vs arch?

oh and being canadian tuition prices aren't that big an issue since they're both pretty much the same. $7500-8000 per year. this is all of course depending on if i do manage to get into canada med. its wicked hard.

I had mentioned a while back that my wife is a doctor.

Right now, she's on call through the holidays. She'll get off work (hopefully) at 9 pm on Christmas Eve, and then has to be back at work at 7 am Christmas Day. Same for New Years.

She's 34. She's been doing this since she was 21 and started med school. That's 13 years, and still she doesn't get Christmas off. I've never worked in an architecture firm where we didn't get at least Christmas off.

It's a long haul, and if you want the cushy life as a doctor, most likely you'll spend all of your work time treating a) strep throat, b) skin rashes or c) guys with prostate problems. Day after day. Same problem, same solution, repeat ad nauseum.

The people who do interesting research and such? They're in an academic setting where the pressure and hours are considerable.

The thing I like about architecture is that it changes with every client and every project. Many of us get to work in varied regions on varied project types. Though a lot of it can be boring, most of it is pretty exciting.

what's her specialty? that's cool, I've always thought architect/doctor marriage would be a pretty neat combo for a relationship. i digress though.

are you licensed? are my salary projections for advancement in the field of arch pretty accurate?

go the nurse route.... i have a friend that has a 5year b.a. and worked in a few big named firms and he stopped doing arch and took classes to be an emt. he's also going into the armed forces... air force i think...

some folks are just tired of the architecture life.... it gets old.... it's also hard when you are creative and need that outlet, and if you can't let it out, then you go crazy........ so it's either you do or you don't

it was such a long time ago that I started this thread that I had to re-register again because i forgot my info as 123.

Anyway, to update everyone i decided NOT to do this for many reasons. After shadowing several docs in the hospital to really understand what the process and experiences were like, I realize I don't have the motivation and endurance to pursue this very long, difficult, strenous and expensive path that takes about 12-15 years. The responsibility to make life and death decisions for other people is too much of a burden for me. Although I'm only 26 yrs. old, I am also not willing to make the sacrifices necessary in my life as an older, non-traditional student in order to become a doctor. I realize it's not worthwhile and would not make me happier.

Interesting. archinecters bitch about the time demands of the profession, but when asked to actually consider medicine, we back down.

My wife is a doctor too. She decided she wanted to become one at the age of 27, and had to go to night school for two years to get the science prerequisites in. She did a residency in family medicine, then did three fellowships, each 1-2 years. I won her heart (she still says) by cooking for her every time she got off an in-patient shift. Strange how stress makes you focus on basics. It's clear it was tough for her getting through, and I couldn't begin to tell you how many of her peers act like they are still 21 and at a frat party when they get a day off -- even the ones in their mid 40s.

I spent my 20s working for internet companies and collecting advanced degrees in the human sciences, which means my life revolved around dinner, getting lucky, and reading obscure texts. She taught me her work discipline in the first two years of our marriage, and as a result I didn't loose a single nights' sleep getting through architecture school.

When we met I had a weird job that was technically faculty at a medical school (I taught 8 hours a year) I think I made half again more than her for the first year we were together, we matched during her first fellowship, and now she makes 4.4 times what I do. She works four days a week, 8 to 4. I haven't had a 'salary' or 'hours' since I was 23.

Our combined student debt is bigger than our mortgage, and we'll probably be paying part of it off after we retire. We only have one guest bedroom (by choice), and one car (also by choice). On the other hand, we get three paid weeks off a year, and we spend one on a beach in Hawaii, one doing 'research' in Europe, and one someplace else that interests us.

Our friends do interesting things, and there aren't many people we know who have to pimp themselves much -- at least in any way they don't want to anyway. Someday I'll have to figure out the whole "you have to suffer as a CAD monkey if you want a license" thing, but I'm not in a big rush.

So are you a practicing architect mespellrong?

And are you still practicing 123>?

Looking at it, it seems like the length of time to be an architect and doctor is pretty comparable. About the same time for actual in school training, with IDP and Residency years upon graduating, both of which get paid pretty much the same. only after residency it's a guaranteed >$100,000, and with IDP and licensure you get around ~$75,000-$80,000 not guaranteed. Maybe millions if you're good or a real estate developer as well. but susceptible to market fluctuations.

yeah the "unemployed architect" thread among others are definitely some things that I'm weighing through. good to keep your eyes wide open.

Maybe the answer is to marry a doctor, to provide the security and vicariously live through them, and maybe them through me. :-). Nah.... if it happens I'm not going to say no though. I may not be an actively seeking gold digger but I'm not that stupid.

Is your life about your work, or what you do after work?

Medical school is a tough tough work!! I believe unless you love the field and want to help others don't choose it. From what I read in the posts above the time required to "make it raiiiin" in both fields,architecture and medical field is the same and during the apprenticeship years you are stuck in low wages so I'd reconsider that option but one thing that is really attractive about medical field is that the job market for that is STABLE!! Architecture loses lots of brownie points when it comes to stability and job security.

Yeah there's the rub. to be honest all this gloom and doom about the employment of architects are scaring me, making medicine more and more attractive. i have some friends going through med school right now and they've told me how tough it is. at some point they've all wanted to quit. the pros keep saying only do it if you love it. but looks like everybody says that about every profession. i'll explore further with shadowing and volunteering

one doesn't need to become a doctor to earn better than architecture wages in the healthcare. an rn can do that. so can a physical therapist or any number of career paths.

i'm thinking about taking massage classes after grad school....... get a few clients a week, you can make an extra 400-600 a week

yeah if i were to jump in i don't think i'd be content with being an rn or pa. i'm kind of a knowledge junkie and if i were to pick a career i'd want to have the highest knowledge of that industry possible. so if health care is the case, the highest knowledge of medicine would be afforded to doctors which would be what i'd be more attracted to. same with architecture, i don't think i'd be content with being a journeyman carpenter (I've worked under some for a couple of years now). i'd want to know everything. though i have the utmost respect for them and for the many things they do know (which i know architects aren't necessarily aware of), this thirst for knowledge won't be quenched as well as going all the way in the field. plus i like the challenges.

I really don't see a point of becoming a doctor for the money, with the new universal healthcare coverage, doctors will not be able to steal that much money anymore!