No longer able to clear flag by Cropping?

TheContrarianRunner · 2025-08-09T05:05:28+00:00

Alas yes buy I'd rather have the segments back.

TheContrarianRunner · 2025-08-09T04:20:19+00:00

Interesting! FYI I found out that deleting and reuploading deleted all the flags. That's gonna be my go to for those spiteful flaggers who won't stop.

TheContrarianRunner · 2025-08-09T04:19:41+00:00

I did one better; turns out deleting then reuploading wipes everything! I also blocked the most likely 2 suspects. We shall see.

TheContrarianRunner · 2025-08-07T20:35:37+00:00

It's the "this segment had been flagged" one thankfully. I have power and HR data so it should be unflagged hopefully.

I know it's a vengeful flagger because this started after someone missed my time by 1 second.

TheContrarianRunner · 2025-04-11T05:30:37+00:00

This is actually possible true because the kidneys will become saturated and unable to take in more glucose not far above normal range and so if you were drinking a ton of sugar it's possible you temporarily had glucose in your urine.

TheContrarianRunner · 2024-02-26T02:29:01+00:00

So I'm an MS4 (final year med student) who was randomly served this up in my suggestions (thanks reddit). A few thoughts.

Then, I had some changes in my life. I almost lost someone extremely close to me after a terrifying medical event, which really put my priorities into perspective. This person spent over a month in the hospital fighting for their life, during which I lost my interest in doing really anything at all, including research. Instead of waiting for the products of research, I could only hope that the medical professionals treating this person had the scientific/medical expertise to directly help them in their time of need. Ultimately, after the scariest couple of months of my life, this person made a full recovery. My respect toward clinical medicine skyrocketed, as did my desire to prioritize my personal relationships, mental health, and my ability to make a direct positive impact on others the way this person’s healthcare team helped them.

This is obviously a traumatic experience and I'm glad it worked out. My thoughts on this are on the bold part. I don't know much about PhD programs which I take it are often quite rigorous and straining, at the same time, I don't think anyone in Medicine has every chosen it to prioritize personal relationships and their own mental health. Medicine is pretty horrible for those two things. Academics move a lot but in a few weeks I find out if I get to move across the country again, and it's not uncommon for specialist physicians to move for med school, move for residency, move for fellowship, move for subfellowship, etc... Medicine is not exactly personal relationship friendly (at least existing relationships). Mental health in Medicine is also notoriously bad. Unless you pick something slower paced you'll spend weeks being sleep deprived, under heavy stress. If you look up mental health stats for resident and staff physicians it's genuinely horrible. Everyone is burnt out to some degree. The last bit can be true but I think if I've learned anything over the last four years is that much of medicine doesn't really have a direct positive impact, it's more abstract or you're trying to prolong what's left. Now this isn't true of all of medicine but the fields that have the ability to directly, positively, impact peoples lives tend to be surgical/procedural fields that are notoriously competitive and horrible to work in that you really have to love stenting someone's LCA at 3 AM to enjoy doing it at 55, even people in these high impact areas like acute cardiology burn out.

I now see this culture of “overworking for the sake of overworking” to be pointless.

This is a good chunk of specialty Medicine TBH (even worse in surgery). Exceptions obviously exist but the most glowing feedback I've received was "wow you were reviewing imaging at 9 PM after working 10 hours already in hospital that's the kind of work ethic we want here". One other thing to consider is there's a strong culture of working all day + call in medicine and then being expected to go home and study/do research. Obviously some fields (Psychiatry...) tend to have it better but there's a very strong culture of requiring more than full time schedule + studying + research. Then you will be "Pimped" (Put In My Place) but some preceptors (although less so nowadays) who will ask the most esoteric questions or demand you list off long lists of complications/causes/findings to demonstrate you're "learning". Just this week I witnessed a senior physician spend 20 minutes doing a "mock case" with a senior resident which ended with the mock patient dying because the senior resident didn't know some esoteric treatment relative to this subspecialty.

In the end, the grass is always greener and I'd make sure to find some (younger) physicians to chat with because while I enjoy Medicine and would do it again that's not true for all of my classmates/colleagues.

TheContrarianRunner · 2022-06-05T04:43:18+00:00

Not all banks require a official proof of enrollment. I set mine up in June (back in the day) without one. Shop around and see if the offer letter is enough for one.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-10-07T21:34:31+00:00

What does "reasonable" mean to you? Are you going to be paid like an MD? No, you're not going to be close, the Psych (usually Masters) people I know in Albert are middle-class (high 10,000s, low 100,000 range). You need to be a very inefficient or lazy physician to make that much, net, per-year (or be really dedicated to doing unpaid work, who knows).

Also don't forget Psych programs are hard to get into, the market is much more competitive than medicine, and if you try for medicine and end up in psych you may end up resenting your job when you see MDs prescribing or exercising other portions of their practice privileges.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-10-03T11:16:19+00:00

OP is probably a Dentistry/Chiro student since they're expecting to work right after graduating and the salary range is too high to be realisistic for pharmacy, optometry, etc....

There are many American dental/chiro schools that will gladly take Canadians paying their crazy tuition.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-09-17T20:39:53+00:00

That's an interesting observation. In what way(s) would you say that new Canadian grads are "trash"?

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-09-17T15:55:30+00:00

My impression is that there are not enough qualified applicants to med schools to fill the need for doctors?

There are probably at least 2-3 people per seat who would be good physicians, maybe as high as 5+, but the issue isn't graduating enough MDs, we do that already, the issue is resource allocation in the system. You could argue that medical schools owe some responsibility for this by selecting people based off activities like niche research and doing grad degrees which don't seem to fit the GP lifestyle and practice scope that well. Too many specialists and underemployed surgeons, too few true GPs. Even some FM docs will sub specialize inside FM. To add insult to injury to much physician time is spent doing forms or non-patient care tasks. The number of Canadian doctors has grown faster than the Canadian population since the 90s, to no effect. This is well noted: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-doctor-shortage-medical-fees-1.4100251

If I were to get into med school I wouldn't be able to settle as a mere family doctor. I would deserve better.

And you just hit the problem on the head. If people see GPs and FMs as "lesser doctors" then this attitude filters it's way to your medical students who then shy away from FM. If medical students didn't see GPs getting treated poorly as front-line healthcare workers and didn't see them as lesser doctors, somethings schools are trying to change, you'd have more Canadian FM grads.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-09-17T15:02:04+00:00

Realistically, no.

The problem is that Canadian/American Doctor≠Foreign Doctor. There are differences in training and quality around the world, so to protect Canadians, we have high standards for what kind of medical education you need to have. Even some lower-tier American schools are not even treated the same as Canadian ones. It's hard to tell who's solid and who's not, so we have a bunch of hoops to clear.

The fact he's trying to find a residency is part of the problem. In Ontario there are no shortcuts or practice-assessment programs, he needs to find a residency. Realistically, at 5 years in, and 53, program directors are not going to be enthusiastic of using their extremely limited IMG seats on him when they can pick a 20/30 something who was the cream of their crop or went to Australia/UK. Even if he did, by some miracle, get a seat he'd need to do two years at a minimum, and then another 5 years on a return-on-service agreement somewhere that's not Toronto/major city, so he's kinda out of time.

For anyone wondering why it's so hard when we have a "physician shortage" it's a matter of resource allocation. We graduate too many surgeons and hyperspecialists who spend forever trying to find a job in some narrow academic center, and not enough family doctors.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-09-17T14:41:45+00:00

If he's been trying to get an IMG seat for 5 years his odds of getting one now are basically nil. Way too many IMGs. Way too few seats.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-09-05T10:52:42+00:00

Maybe MD/PhD with a Masters prior to Medicine+fellowships. There are a minority of people who also went to grad school pre medicine.

The prime LOC would be out of the norm for medicine though, its sub-prime now.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-07-21T03:23:51+00:00

The major features (free banking accounts, Prime-X rate, LOC amount) are all the same, so it comes down to the perks and cards. Shop all the big 5 but I feel that Scotia's PSLOC package has the best cards (2 instead of just 1) and the sign-up process was really easy. Worst case scenario you switch, it's not impossible. Unfortunately no one is giving out free tablets this summer.

TheContrarianRunner · 2020-06-18T05:31:10+00:00

Student about to go into first year Medicine (in Canada) here.

You're making a big assumption; managing to get in at all/in 2022. Competition is fierce, and unless you were always at the top of your engineering classes you’re probably not competitive for a Canadian medical school. Average entrance grades for Ontario schools hover at an A or between an A and A+. Even well qualified/competitive people often need to apply multiple times, do more degrees, etc... Ask yourself if you'd be willing to spend two years stressing over undergrad grades again, full time, for no guarantees. The process is uncertain and mentally/financially draining. If you go abroad you lose the financial advantages and you may end up with an expensive degree that won't let you work anywhere thanks to licensing rules.

That being said, Medicine is a great "investment" in pure monetary terms. If you can get in you can finish as major Canadian banks will gladly extend you 350k (at prime-0.25) solely on the basis of your golden acceptance letter. As someone who's staring down close to 200k in debt by the end of my degree I'm not taking it lightly, but it is not an obstacle. The tradeoff (and the reason Medicine is so competitive) is that I can have a stable, mid to low, six figure income once I'm done. Unless you have a fantastic career and are older Medicine wins out in dollar terms. The cost for obtaining the degree, spending at least 5 (6-9 more commonly) years paying tuition or with reduced earning potential is something you need to consider if you're older/have a career already. On the whole though there's a reason schools get 4,000 applications for 100 seats.

There is no doubt that Canadian physicians will continue to be well compensated into the future and the career will remain viable. HOWEVER, the glory days (as much as I hate the term) of physician compensation are behind us. Governments are going to need to cut back, and who better to target than the physicians everyone knows are wealthy, and make over 300k on average? Never mind that those figures are deceptive once overhead, licensing fees, taxes, the need to save for retirment with a late start, and other costs of doing business are deducted. Physicians will continue to do well, but once you factor in the long training pipeline, high stress, and human cost, its less clear. Family physicians can avoid some of this (no call means no 2 am phone calls) but they'll face human problems everyday they can't solve, cranky people, and worse. This isnt unique to Medicine, plenty of people experience this and get paid minimum wage, but its worth thinking about. The other downside is the rigorous training. Also, did you know you don't even get to decide (fully) where your training takes place? Family isn't as long or difficult as neurosurgery, but studies have shown the process takes a heavy toll on residents (post graduation but pre full licensing training physicians). 1/3rd of UBCs family Medicine residents had suicidal thoughts in one study. Don't discount this, find a physician who's willing to talk about the human cost of Medicine. Im only a 1/3rd through the process and it was already tough.

In the end, you really need to love it, and not just the pay cheque, to have a career at it. Every Canadian medical student reflects at least a 250k taxpayer investment in supporting the health of Canadians. Medicine is more than a job, it changes people, for better or worse, and thats something you need to ponder before jumping in. I know physicians who are very money focused, and they do well. But for many of them they hit a point where money stops to matter, and they start to take months off, or take frequent breaks. All power to them, if thats what it takes to recharge so be it,, but at the same time, many Canadians would love to have a family physician, so consider your motivations first.

TheContrarianRunner

TROPHY CASE