September 24, 2025 • 27 mins
In this conversation, Geoff Rutledge shares his unique journey from film production to medicine, discussing the challenges he faced in medical school, the importance of stability in his career, and how he balances family life with his profession. He reflects on the skills he gained from his film background that have helped him in medicine, the financial considerations of pursuing a medical degree, and the creative outlets he maintains outside of work. Geoff emphasizes the importance of considering possibilities for change and offers advice for those looking to transition careers.
Email: nick@reroutedpod.comWebsite: https://www.reroutedpod.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rerouted-podcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/rerouted_pod
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to Rerouted, where we explore unique career paths
to give you the tools you need to create the life you want.
On today's episode, I talked with Jeff Rutledge, a family
practitioner. Jeff graduated college with a
degree in film, but realized that it wasn't for him.
We discussed his journey from film to medicine, his philosophy
of prioritizing the lifestyle a job provides as opposed to the
job itself, and how he still maintains creative outlets
(00:22):
outside of work. Let's get into it.
Jeff, thank you so much for joining me today.
It's great to. Have you?
Thank you. Great to be here.
All right, let's start off. I just want to talk a little bit
about your educational background.
Can you tell me about what you did through your bachelor's
degree? I did a bachelor's in Media
Communications with an emphasis in film and video production at
(00:45):
Webster University in Saint Louis.
All right. Very nice.
What were some of the, excuse me, some of the things that you
learned with in media production?
When you learn in media production, you learn, I learned
everything from the, it's kind of a broad spectrum, obviously
from, you know, making commercials to movies to art
(01:08):
pieces to, you know, all kinds of things.
But the most important things you learn is the construction of
things. And then the realization that
everything you shoot and everything you plan all actually
revolves around the editing, which is what I ended up really
liking doing was turning. Turning essentially a whole pile
of nothing into something, right?
(01:29):
Very nice. Excuse me.
So I remember last time we spoke, you were telling me about
how you were on this path and you're doing film, but you
decided to change that. You decided at some point that
that wasn't you wanted to do. Could you walk us through that?
Yeah, I came to this realizationpretty late.
You know, senior year I realizedthat a lot of what I wanted to
(01:50):
do was essentially project based.
There's no continuum. It's all finish one project,
find a new project, finish another project.
And there was not a lot of stability around it.
And one of the things I realizedabout myself somewhere during
college was I like stability. I like some predictability and
where I'm going to work and where I'm, you know who I'm
(02:12):
working for, what's going to be done.
And there just isn't that with film video production, you know,
if you work for a production company, you'll be, you know,
not having to go find the work. But there's not necessarily any
stability on their end either, because if you're working for a
production house, somebody's going to have to go find that
work and there may not be any. So they didn't didn't
(02:35):
necessarily provide the kind of stability and predictability in
my schedule that I want out of life.
So I thought it wasn't for me. All right.
So after you kind of decided or you found that that wasn't for
you, what were your next steps? I didn't take any steps for a
couple of years. I was just mostly enjoying my
(02:56):
early 20s and delivering pizzas and, you know, just making just
enough money to sort of pay rentand, you know, live, do some
things that I just whatever I felt like doing basically.
So, you know, it took a while. I mean, at some point, my
girlfriend now wife, who we've been together for all of college
(03:16):
and, and a couple of years afterand she was like, you know,
you've got a, a bachelor's degree, you should maybe aspire
to a little more than deliveringpizzas.
And, and I knew that was right. But, you know, I didn't know
what she said. I don't know, manage a Pizza
Hut, go back to school. I liked, you know, medieval
history and and that kind of thing.
So when I go for a history degree or something, so I just
(03:39):
started to think about and I took took my time, you know, a
couple of months to think about what, what I might want to do.
So it and I approached it from the standpoint and I was going
to figure out what I wanted my life to be like.
I knew I wanted again, this kindof stability and I wanted
predictability. I decided it would be neat to
(03:59):
own my own business. I thought that'd be kind of
cool. I thought it'd be good to be
able to help people in some way.I thought it would be good to.
I definitely wanted, you know, lack of a boss if possible.
Wanted to make not a a ton of money.
(04:20):
My my desires were simple. I wanted to maybe be able to
afford a house someday and maybebe able to help my kids go to
college and that kind of stuff. So what what kind of income did
that require? Then you know, what was I
capable of doing? I was I decided medicine was it.
I had a when I was 21, got delivering pizzas, no insurance,
(04:45):
got really sick, really sick. It was strep throat.
I knew it was strep throat. I'd had it a few times.
I went to see a, a family practice doctor near me and I
said, look, I, you know, I don'thave the money to pay you today,
but we can work something out. I'll, I'll make payments or
whatever. She saw me, did the test, gave
me the antibiotics and said, youknow, just, you don't, you don't
(05:07):
need to pay me. You just, you know, move on and
I thought, you know, it would bereally cool if I could do
something like that. I could be able to help people
have a lot of control over my own, you know, destiny there
again, no boss. So I thought, hey, I could
probably try to do that. I really liked science for no
apparent reason. I took had taken in high school
(05:30):
AP chemistry, AP physics, knowing I would never use those
in film and video production. I just thought it was kind of
cool. So like took those classes so I
knew I, you know, kind of had the capability of doing the
work. So then I had to figure out how
do I pursue a career in medicinewith a degree in film because I
(05:51):
had no sciences in college. None they don't require.
So I had to do some extra work on that front all.
Right. How did you get them from point
A to point B there? Where'd you learn about what the
extra work that you had to do was?
And then how'd you eventually end up going and becoming a
family practitioner, getting into Med school and all that?
(06:12):
I had to, you know, with a near total absence of the Internet at
the time, had to figure out whatthe prerequisites were for
medical school. So, you know, headed to the
library and the card catalog andfigured out some information on
what I needed to do. I needed organic chemistry and
physics and regular Gen. chem biology.
(06:35):
And then there was a there was an open question about whether I
actually needed calculus. I did not.
As it turns out, I did need someusable trigonometry, but that
was it. My wife taught me all I needed
to know about trigonometry by the Soka Toa thing.
(06:55):
I don't know if you know. Yeah, I know what you mean.
Of course that's. All I needed to get through
physics, that was everything I needed so I'd never even take
trigger calc I just start I I called then once I figured out
my prerequisites, I figured I have to figure out how I can
afford this because I can't. Once you have a bachelor's
(07:18):
degree, you can't get any further financial aid.
There's no grants, there's no loans, there's no well
subsidized loans. They'll, they'll loan you money,
but it's not subsidized. So, so I called the Dean of
admissions at Wash U and he was super nice and, and I said,
look, I can only afford to go for my sciences to Community
(07:39):
College. I got to just pay for it out of
pocket and that's all I can workon.
I'm a pizza driver. And do you think if I do that, I
can still get into medical school?
And, and he gave me a very detailed like here's what you
got to do. And if you do all these things,
you still won't get into Wash U,but you could get in some
medical school somewhere. So I basically followed that
(08:03):
plan, took a couple of classes at a time.
It's was relatively low risk. I invested the small amount of
money on a credit card to go andtake my first physics class.
Loved it, thought it was really a lot of fun.
I thought I can definitely do this and then I started taking
the rest of the classes until I finally got most of the
prerequisites and ended up taking my MCAT and scoring well
(08:26):
on that. I knew I was going to get in at
that point all. Right.
Was there a certain joy you mentioned loving physics.
I'm curious, was there a certainjoy of kind of coming back to
classes that you took like 6 years ago maybe to kind of, you
know, rediscover these topics? Yeah, I mean, obviously my brain
was still familiar with the material, but you know,
classical physics is great. It's super understandable.
(08:49):
You can see it all around you. You know, there was one point I
was coming out of physics class,there were stairs and there was
a little sort of ramp on the side of the stairs and it was
winter and I'm thinking, I'm walking out of there thinking
about the coefficient of friction as I'm walking down the
ramp and how my shoes are against the concrete.
I just thought this is, yeah, I,I'm even thinking about it in
(09:11):
fun ways. I so it was, it was a lot of fun
to go back to that part. Parts that were less fun, I
guess I, I don't, don't love Gen. chem.
I turned out to really like organic, which isn't a popular
opinion, but I found myself kindof reading ahead and organic
because I just thought it was really cool anyway.
So yeah, it's pretty, pretty funto go back and do that and
(09:32):
realize I was capable of those things.
Yeah. All right.
So you're at this point now where you've taken your classes,
you've taken your MCAT and you've gotten into Med school.
Were there any sort of, were there challenges kind of coming
back to school and like very rigorous school at this point
after being out of the game for a little bit?
I mean, you know, coming into medical school a little older
(09:55):
with not what you would considera classic background, right?
There's always, there's always some level of like imposter
syndrome. I mean, you know, what am I?
All these people are, you know, been wanting to do this since
they were 12 and they've been working through all these things
in high school and college. There's pre Med planning, all
(10:15):
this stuff, right? And you're like, what?
You know, so most of my struggles with the work was
internal. I, I have no problems following
a plan and Med school is really good about here's your plan.
Here's all the things you have to do every year, every
semester. Here's what you got to do once
you get done with clinicals. I mean, all of it's really laid
out. So Yep, tell me what the work is
(10:37):
that needs to be done and when it needs to be done by and I can
follow that. So the only real challenge was
in my own head of like, am I really supposed to be here with
all these people who aren't, youknow, set up the same way?
Sure. Were there any points where you
kind of were able to breakthrough some of that
imposter syndrome? I'll let you know.
(11:00):
OK. So you know, of course, you
know, you show up and, and you do the work and you start to
know that you do know what you're talking about.
Learn after, because I'll tell you, even for doctors, when they
finish medical school and their residency and then all of a
sudden they're sitting in an office and they're the show.
And almost everyone I knew stillwas like, I don't, I don't know
(11:25):
that I'm supposed to be out hereon my own.
I feel like somebody should still be watching me.
It takes actually a couple of years after you're doing your
own work to realize that you do know what you're what you're
doing and no one needs to reallydouble check you.
Even today, you know, doing family medicine, you kind of got
to know everything cradle to thegrave, the whole, you know,
(11:48):
babies and shots and medicines, new things that are coming out,
diabetes and high blood pressureand all that, just everything.
And people now have a tendency to do their do their own
research, right? They'll do a quick Google search
on their either their symptoms or their condition and, and give
you a rundown of all the things that they found out that, you
(12:10):
know, sometimes you don't even have time to explain why it's
all wrong. But so, but some of that
imposter center will still creepup.
You know, where you're like, damn, did they read something
that's new that I just don't know about yet?
You know, because there's such awide volume of information.
I think it's that you know that that Dunning Kruger effect,
(12:31):
right? Or I think that's what it's
called, where people with the least amount of amount of
information to assess whether they're good at something or not
think they're great at it. And the people with the best
skill set to be good at something doubt everything about
what they're doing because they know you know how much there is
that they know or don't know. So I think there's been, there's
(12:53):
still a constant kind of struggle with that.
And all you do is you continue to work, double check, go back,
learn new things, make sure thatyou're doing your continuing
medical education, doing all thestuff that you need to stay
abreast of new stuff. And and if somebody brings you
something, at least have the humility to say I'm not sure and
go, go find out. Yeah.
(13:13):
All right. I'm curious, were there any
certain skills that you picked up while you were in while you
were doing film that kind of translated to your study in Med
school? If the answer's no, that's OK.
I'm just no. Yeah, OK.
I mean, I'm thinking, you know, but but yeah, there's, you know,
when you're doing project based stuff, yeah, there's a timeline,
(13:34):
there's deadlines, but there is no map.
There's no here are the steps you take because you can take
whatever steps you want. It's always different.
So not as much. OK, OK.
And that makes sense to me. All right.
You've talked about how you decided that you wanted to go to
Med school and become a doctor because of the idea of what kind
(13:57):
of lifestyle that you wanted. Did you find that after you
graduated and you started practicing that that kind of
lined up with your expectations?It did.
I mean, again, lucky enough to have, but by choosing something
where I had control over, you know, my schedule and my place
of work, the type of practice I wanted to do, I ended up with a
lot of control over my lifestyleso that I could, I mean, you
(14:21):
still obviously have to show up and do the work.
Yeah, but it did provide all thethings that I expected it to
because that's what I was working for.
And again, you at some point youmake these decisions.
You're like, hey, man, I I'm working this number of hours,
seeing this number of patients. I need more money or I need more
time off. There are trade-offs to those
(14:42):
things, but you get to make kindof those decisions.
And if you, you know, if I couldhave done orthopedic surgery and
made a bunch more money and had a much worse life schedule,
right. So you just being able to decide
what's kind of important to you and craft that.
It turned out medicine provided that for me because I chose that
(15:02):
path. There were a lot of paths
available and again you pick theone that fits what what you want
your life to be like all. Right.
Were there any paths on that idea?
If there were a lot of paths available, were there other
paths that you considered going down?
I considered, you know, I reallylike babies, like delivering
babies. I thought that was great.
But again, pathway for like an OBGYN or something, it was a lot
(15:24):
of surgery and other stuff that I did not enjoy.
I really just like the babies part.
So again, family practice let meat least see babies and with the
potential for doing deliveries again, I didn't want that on
call 24/7 for a lifestyle all. Right.
(15:47):
When you come to approach thinking about lifestyle, what
is kind of if you were able to chop it up into like a pie chart
of the things that are importantto you and the way that you're
defining it into certain elements, whether that's time
with family money, ability to set your own schedule.
What does that kind of look likefor you?
I'd say you know, probably 50% at least is time with family.
(16:09):
How much you know can I do there?
And again, do you have the flexibility to suddenly shift,
shift gears and and do less workand more family if it's needed?
But yeah, 50% family, probably 25% income.
(16:30):
I've been broke. I've been really broke.
You know, like am I going to payrent or electricity kind of
broke? So, you know, I wanted a lot of
stability there. Again, I didn't need, I don't
need to drive a, you know, BMWI don't need my mansion.
But I definitely wanted to get away from worrying about the
day-to-day. So at least 25% was financial
(16:56):
and then only the remaining 25% was the work I was doing.
Sure, I would think you know. I want to keep talking about
money a little bit and I kind ofwant to go back to being in Med
school and applying to Med school, talking about how being
financially stable is very important to you.
How'd you weigh that against going to Med school and spending
(17:18):
time at school? I know Med school is not cheap
and you might not have a lot of time to do work to earn money
during that. How'd you kind of weigh that and
how would you make sure that that wasn't maybe necessarily
100% always top of mind and you're able to stay focused on
studies as well? So you know, when you're in Med
school, you get a little, you borrow more than the tuition.
(17:41):
You, you got to borrow a certainamount to live on over a period
of time. So, but it was as much or equal
to what I've been earning previously.
So it's still doable. I was again, lucky enough, I
then got married and my wife hasstarted working.
So there was definitely some significant income there, but
not enough to pay for medical school, obviously.
(18:02):
It was just really, and I, I didsome, what I would think of as
poorer planning by going to Saint Louis University rather
than East Tennessee State or, you know, Memphis.
I had some other options for medical school, but I chose the
one I thought was, I don't know the best, but I thought it was
also in Saint Louis and I had some roots here.
(18:24):
So I thought I'd want to do that, but it cost me a lot more
money. I was always just convinced I
would have earned enough to pay it back, which is sort of true.
I mean, I I'll have it paid off in another five years or so.
OK, so. Like realistically, I'm, I'm
almost 60, I'll be paid off justbefore that.
(18:46):
So, so I could have made it a lot, a lot cheaper, but it's
hard to be upset with those decisions you make if you have
the life you want. Yeah.
Then then yeah, you, you made a decision.
Maybe you, maybe you have a little, a little less, you
incurred a little more debt thanyou should have, but these are
not deal breaker things. You can work around it.
(19:08):
Yeah, All right. And like you said to, you kind
of created the life that you want, and that's clearly seems
to be the most important thing to you, so that's great.
All right, Curious, film is verycreative by nature.
Have there kind of been any waysthat you've feel like you've
lacked that? Sure, sure.
(19:29):
I, I mean, I, I, like I said, I really enjoy like storytelling
and stuff like that. So I mean, at some point and I
would, you know, when the girls were little, they'd tell me a
couple of things and I would make up a story for them for
bedtime, that kind of stuff where I would just Princess
Cooper and Princess Josephine's stories and tell them that they
were the stars that so, you know, the little, little things
(19:52):
that you enjoy doing, you can doon your own.
I I've, you know, started writing, you know, I don't know,
probably 10 years ago wrote somechildren's book stuff like, you
know, and mostly, you know, trying kind of rehashing the
stories that I had, some of the stories I told them that I then
turned into books and stuff. So, you know, it's not like I've
gone and published them or anything, but they're written,
(20:15):
Yeah, they're in a box, you know, basically.
So you find ways to to express those other things you want to
do just because you want to do them, not because they're your.
Career I also, they were cheerleaders and I would, I
would video their competitions and put together some end of
year stuff that like memory videos of, of, of what the team
(20:38):
did that year. So again, just because I, I that
was part of that sort of need for a creative outlet.
So you find ways to do that other stuff too.
That's great. Have you ever thought about
publishing the books, The children's books?
Yeah, it's a lot of work. Sure, I can imagine.
I mean, the books are done. I've had them edit it.
(20:59):
I've had them, you know, I belong to a writer's group.
So I, I would go to that every week and we would go over
chapters and twos and stuff. I've I've read other people's
works as a beta reader, You know, a lot of people in the
group have have published books,but the amount of dedication
that you put into just trying toget someone to read the damn
(21:23):
thing. It turned out it takes a lot and
I got, you know, I got kind of fed up with with the idea.
I did have publishing world thatwork slowly.
I, I did get a contract for one of the children's books and
then, I don't know, the illustrator quit or something
happened and then this other project took priority.
So I've still got a contract. I've still got a thing sitting
(21:43):
out there that might one day actually happen, but I don't
know. It's, it's years of extra effort
even after you find someone to read it and want to publish it.
It's even a couple of years beyond that.
So one of the most interesting things I did with that was I, I
had an editor, somebody read it and they were like, this is
fantastic. It's great.
(22:05):
You get it. You just got to change all this.
And I'm like, OK, so essentiallywhat you've just told me in this
e-mail is you'd love what I've done.
It's fantastic except for all the words I've written.
That's all that has to change. And that's that's part of it,
right? You've written a thing, you
think it's good. You send it out to somebody and
then they want to change a bunchof stuff.
And so you have to constantly listen to kind of what they want
(22:29):
to do with what you've already done.
I imagine musicians have the same kind of struggle where
they're like, this is the piece of music and then some producer
goes, I well, yeah, but we're going to put these drums over
here. Well, that doesn't fit.
So at that point, I got kind of kind of fed up with it.
Again, I already told you I don't like having bosses.
(22:50):
So. So I still got all these things
written, but. And at some point I will
probably, now that all my children are in college,
dedicate the time to trying to get it published.
But you could always self publish.
I suppose I could just throw them up on Amazon now, but I
feel like that's not that's cheating.
Sure, sure. OK.
(23:11):
You know, I mean, like I said, Imean people can do it, but then
again, the work, you got to go and try and market it and get
people to click on your thing and you know, so there's all
kinds of algorithms and stuff you have to be involved with.
And again, that seems like not the part of the work I wanted to
do. I'm curious, were there any
sorts of inspiration as well, not just from your time with
(23:33):
your daughters, but then also your career and being a family
practitioner? Were there inspirations that you
drew from working with children or other people and being a
doctor? Wow.
I mean, so I don't know, like I said, I've always been kind of
in that storyteller vein, right?That's the film and video
production, all that kind of stuffs you take inspiration from
(23:55):
all over. But I've always been like, you
know, fantasy fiction kind of person.
So I, I read a lot and you just maybe take some inspiration from
the structure of those stories. But then as well, the more
knowledge you get, no knowledge is wasted.
So everything I learned in film and video, everything I learned
by reading, everything I, you know, learned by in medicine all
(24:19):
plays into that at some point oranother.
There's actually, you know, one part of a book that that where
there's a pretty bad wound. And so, you know, you draw on
your information from medicine for that.
You know, I wouldn't say it totally fits together with the
(24:40):
the medicine part, but it comes up.
Yeah, for sure it would be. I would honestly be a little
more concerned. I think that if you said that
everything that you ever did in medicine was translated into a
children's book, I think that that would Personally, the idea
of having that as a children's book scares me a little bit.
Yeah, me too. There's a lot of fluids and
aromas in doctoring that it's not always pleasant so.
(25:04):
If the approach that you've taken of having kind of building
your career around this lifestyle, if there were
somebody who it was in a similarposition to you where they've
studied whatever it is that theystudied and realized it wasn't
quite the lifestyle for them, what would you recommend?
My thoughts are don't think of the reasons you can't change
because there's always going to be financial obligations and
(25:26):
family obligations, other kinds of things.
There's lots of reasons you can't, but it doesn't stop you
from thinking about what's possible.
Go and look at at what's possible.
What with what I currently have,how what do I not like about my
job? What do I want to do?
That's going to be, you know, better about that situation to,
(25:48):
to make me happier at work, whatever that work is.
And then try to find ways aroundyour obstacles.
Once you realize what you can't do, why you can't do those
things. Is there another way to, to get
it done? Once again, I, you know, I could
have said OK, right? You know, I can't get loans and
I can't get grants. I, you know, I don't want to
(26:09):
invest all this money in it. Well, I mean, if I hadn't, I
wouldn't have gotten, you know, to this place.
So you say, well, I, I think I can manage it if I do it in
these small parts and I can afford that.
Maybe that maybe you go to nightschool because it doesn't take
too much time out of, you know, your time and energy out of
your, your life and your family.Think positively, What do I
(26:29):
want? And then think about the steps
you can take to get there. And and you'll find that almost
everything is doable is doable. It's inspiring, know a lot of
people kind of get hung up on that idea of it's very much and
Med school definitely isn't a easy natural transition and
(26:50):
you've talked about how much work you put into kind of to get
through that and stick with it. And that's really inspiring.
Thank you so much. I don't have any other questions
for you. Are there any final pieces of
advice that you have, or anything more that you'd like to
bring up? It mostly centers around
everything I just kind of talkedabout.
What about your life? Do you not want to be that way?
(27:11):
And and how can you maneuver to change it?
Because if you don't consider the possibilities, you'll never
change, You'll never shift. If all you're thinking about is
reasons you are stuck, you can'tget unstuck.
Yeah. All right.
Well, thank you so much, Jeff. This has been a great
conversation. I appreciate your time.
(27:31):
Hey, it was a lot of fun. Appreciate it.
Yeah, Ill. You know what?
I got to show mine as well. I, I and I.
All right. Thank you Jeff, I hope you
enjoyed the episode. If you have any thoughts,
feedback or just want to say hi,shoot me an e-mail at
nickreroutedpod.com. If you liked the show, leave a
review, give us a follow and subscribe.
(27:54):
You can find links to our website and socials in the
description below. I'm looking forward to seeing
you next week.
Welcome back to Rerouted, where we explore unique career paths
to give you the tools you need to create the life you want.
On today's episode, I talked with Jeff Rutledge, a family
practitioner. Jeff graduated college with a
degree in film, but realized that it wasn't for him.
We discussed his journey from film to medicine, his philosophy
of prioritizing the lifestyle a job provides as opposed to the
job itself, and how he still maintains creative outlets
(00:22):
outside of work. Let's get into it.
Jeff, thank you so much for joining me today.
It's great to. Have you?
Thank you. Great to be here.
All right, let's start off. I just want to talk a little bit
about your educational background.
Can you tell me about what you did through your bachelor's
degree? I did a bachelor's in Media
Communications with an emphasis in film and video production at
(00:45):
Webster University in Saint Louis.
All right. Very nice.
What were some of the, excuse me, some of the things that you
learned with in media production?
When you learn in media production, you learn, I learned
everything from the, it's kind of a broad spectrum, obviously
from, you know, making commercials to movies to art
(01:08):
pieces to, you know, all kinds of things.
But the most important things you learn is the construction of
things. And then the realization that
everything you shoot and everything you plan all actually
revolves around the editing, which is what I ended up really
liking doing was turning. Turning essentially a whole pile
of nothing into something, right?
(01:29):
Very nice. Excuse me.
So I remember last time we spoke, you were telling me about
how you were on this path and you're doing film, but you
decided to change that. You decided at some point that
that wasn't you wanted to do. Could you walk us through that?
Yeah, I came to this realizationpretty late.
You know, senior year I realizedthat a lot of what I wanted to
(01:50):
do was essentially project based.
There's no continuum. It's all finish one project,
find a new project, finish another project.
And there was not a lot of stability around it.
And one of the things I realizedabout myself somewhere during
college was I like stability. I like some predictability and
where I'm going to work and where I'm, you know who I'm
(02:12):
working for, what's going to be done.
And there just isn't that with film video production, you know,
if you work for a production company, you'll be, you know,
not having to go find the work. But there's not necessarily any
stability on their end either, because if you're working for a
production house, somebody's going to have to go find that
work and there may not be any. So they didn't didn't
(02:35):
necessarily provide the kind of stability and predictability in
my schedule that I want out of life.
So I thought it wasn't for me. All right.
So after you kind of decided or you found that that wasn't for
you, what were your next steps? I didn't take any steps for a
couple of years. I was just mostly enjoying my
(02:56):
early 20s and delivering pizzas and, you know, just making just
enough money to sort of pay rentand, you know, live, do some
things that I just whatever I felt like doing basically.
So, you know, it took a while. I mean, at some point, my
girlfriend now wife, who we've been together for all of college
(03:16):
and, and a couple of years afterand she was like, you know,
you've got a, a bachelor's degree, you should maybe aspire
to a little more than deliveringpizzas.
And, and I knew that was right. But, you know, I didn't know
what she said. I don't know, manage a Pizza
Hut, go back to school. I liked, you know, medieval
history and and that kind of thing.
So when I go for a history degree or something, so I just
(03:39):
started to think about and I took took my time, you know, a
couple of months to think about what, what I might want to do.
So it and I approached it from the standpoint and I was going
to figure out what I wanted my life to be like.
I knew I wanted again, this kindof stability and I wanted
predictability. I decided it would be neat to
(03:59):
own my own business. I thought that'd be kind of
cool. I thought it'd be good to be
able to help people in some way.I thought it would be good to.
I definitely wanted, you know, lack of a boss if possible.
Wanted to make not a a ton of money.
(04:20):
My my desires were simple. I wanted to maybe be able to
afford a house someday and maybebe able to help my kids go to
college and that kind of stuff. So what what kind of income did
that require? Then you know, what was I
capable of doing? I was I decided medicine was it.
I had a when I was 21, got delivering pizzas, no insurance,
(04:45):
got really sick, really sick. It was strep throat.
I knew it was strep throat. I'd had it a few times.
I went to see a, a family practice doctor near me and I
said, look, I, you know, I don'thave the money to pay you today,
but we can work something out. I'll, I'll make payments or
whatever. She saw me, did the test, gave
me the antibiotics and said, youknow, just, you don't, you don't
(05:07):
need to pay me. You just, you know, move on and
I thought, you know, it would bereally cool if I could do
something like that. I could be able to help people
have a lot of control over my own, you know, destiny there
again, no boss. So I thought, hey, I could
probably try to do that. I really liked science for no
apparent reason. I took had taken in high school
(05:30):
AP chemistry, AP physics, knowing I would never use those
in film and video production. I just thought it was kind of
cool. So like took those classes so I
knew I, you know, kind of had the capability of doing the
work. So then I had to figure out how
do I pursue a career in medicinewith a degree in film because I
(05:51):
had no sciences in college. None they don't require.
So I had to do some extra work on that front all.
Right. How did you get them from point
A to point B there? Where'd you learn about what the
extra work that you had to do was?
And then how'd you eventually end up going and becoming a
family practitioner, getting into Med school and all that?
(06:12):
I had to, you know, with a near total absence of the Internet at
the time, had to figure out whatthe prerequisites were for
medical school. So, you know, headed to the
library and the card catalog andfigured out some information on
what I needed to do. I needed organic chemistry and
physics and regular Gen. chem biology.
(06:35):
And then there was a there was an open question about whether I
actually needed calculus. I did not.
As it turns out, I did need someusable trigonometry, but that
was it. My wife taught me all I needed
to know about trigonometry by the Soka Toa thing.
(06:55):
I don't know if you know. Yeah, I know what you mean.
Of course that's. All I needed to get through
physics, that was everything I needed so I'd never even take
trigger calc I just start I I called then once I figured out
my prerequisites, I figured I have to figure out how I can
afford this because I can't. Once you have a bachelor's
(07:18):
degree, you can't get any further financial aid.
There's no grants, there's no loans, there's no well
subsidized loans. They'll, they'll loan you money,
but it's not subsidized. So, so I called the Dean of
admissions at Wash U and he was super nice and, and I said,
look, I can only afford to go for my sciences to Community
(07:39):
College. I got to just pay for it out of
pocket and that's all I can workon.
I'm a pizza driver. And do you think if I do that, I
can still get into medical school?
And, and he gave me a very detailed like here's what you
got to do. And if you do all these things,
you still won't get into Wash U,but you could get in some
medical school somewhere. So I basically followed that
(08:03):
plan, took a couple of classes at a time.
It's was relatively low risk. I invested the small amount of
money on a credit card to go andtake my first physics class.
Loved it, thought it was really a lot of fun.
I thought I can definitely do this and then I started taking
the rest of the classes until I finally got most of the
prerequisites and ended up taking my MCAT and scoring well
(08:26):
on that. I knew I was going to get in at
that point all. Right.
Was there a certain joy you mentioned loving physics.
I'm curious, was there a certainjoy of kind of coming back to
classes that you took like 6 years ago maybe to kind of, you
know, rediscover these topics? Yeah, I mean, obviously my brain
was still familiar with the material, but you know,
classical physics is great. It's super understandable.
(08:49):
You can see it all around you. You know, there was one point I
was coming out of physics class,there were stairs and there was
a little sort of ramp on the side of the stairs and it was
winter and I'm thinking, I'm walking out of there thinking
about the coefficient of friction as I'm walking down the
ramp and how my shoes are against the concrete.
I just thought this is, yeah, I,I'm even thinking about it in
(09:11):
fun ways. I so it was, it was a lot of fun
to go back to that part. Parts that were less fun, I
guess I, I don't, don't love Gen. chem.
I turned out to really like organic, which isn't a popular
opinion, but I found myself kindof reading ahead and organic
because I just thought it was really cool anyway.
So yeah, it's pretty, pretty funto go back and do that and
(09:32):
realize I was capable of those things.
Yeah. All right.
So you're at this point now where you've taken your classes,
you've taken your MCAT and you've gotten into Med school.
Were there any sort of, were there challenges kind of coming
back to school and like very rigorous school at this point
after being out of the game for a little bit?
I mean, you know, coming into medical school a little older
(09:55):
with not what you would considera classic background, right?
There's always, there's always some level of like imposter
syndrome. I mean, you know, what am I?
All these people are, you know, been wanting to do this since
they were 12 and they've been working through all these things
in high school and college. There's pre Med planning, all
(10:15):
this stuff, right? And you're like, what?
You know, so most of my struggles with the work was
internal. I, I have no problems following
a plan and Med school is really good about here's your plan.
Here's all the things you have to do every year, every
semester. Here's what you got to do once
you get done with clinicals. I mean, all of it's really laid
out. So Yep, tell me what the work is
(10:37):
that needs to be done and when it needs to be done by and I can
follow that. So the only real challenge was
in my own head of like, am I really supposed to be here with
all these people who aren't, youknow, set up the same way?
Sure. Were there any points where you
kind of were able to breakthrough some of that
imposter syndrome? I'll let you know.
(11:00):
OK. So you know, of course, you
know, you show up and, and you do the work and you start to
know that you do know what you're talking about.
Learn after, because I'll tell you, even for doctors, when they
finish medical school and their residency and then all of a
sudden they're sitting in an office and they're the show.
And almost everyone I knew stillwas like, I don't, I don't know
(11:25):
that I'm supposed to be out hereon my own.
I feel like somebody should still be watching me.
It takes actually a couple of years after you're doing your
own work to realize that you do know what you're what you're
doing and no one needs to reallydouble check you.
Even today, you know, doing family medicine, you kind of got
to know everything cradle to thegrave, the whole, you know,
(11:48):
babies and shots and medicines, new things that are coming out,
diabetes and high blood pressureand all that, just everything.
And people now have a tendency to do their do their own
research, right? They'll do a quick Google search
on their either their symptoms or their condition and, and give
you a rundown of all the things that they found out that, you
(12:10):
know, sometimes you don't even have time to explain why it's
all wrong. But so, but some of that
imposter center will still creepup.
You know, where you're like, damn, did they read something
that's new that I just don't know about yet?
You know, because there's such awide volume of information.
I think it's that you know that that Dunning Kruger effect,
(12:31):
right? Or I think that's what it's
called, where people with the least amount of amount of
information to assess whether they're good at something or not
think they're great at it. And the people with the best
skill set to be good at something doubt everything about
what they're doing because they know you know how much there is
that they know or don't know. So I think there's been, there's
(12:53):
still a constant kind of struggle with that.
And all you do is you continue to work, double check, go back,
learn new things, make sure thatyou're doing your continuing
medical education, doing all thestuff that you need to stay
abreast of new stuff. And and if somebody brings you
something, at least have the humility to say I'm not sure and
go, go find out. Yeah.
(13:13):
All right. I'm curious, were there any
certain skills that you picked up while you were in while you
were doing film that kind of translated to your study in Med
school? If the answer's no, that's OK.
I'm just no. Yeah, OK.
I mean, I'm thinking, you know, but but yeah, there's, you know,
when you're doing project based stuff, yeah, there's a timeline,
(13:34):
there's deadlines, but there is no map.
There's no here are the steps you take because you can take
whatever steps you want. It's always different.
So not as much. OK, OK.
And that makes sense to me. All right.
You've talked about how you decided that you wanted to go to
Med school and become a doctor because of the idea of what kind
(13:57):
of lifestyle that you wanted. Did you find that after you
graduated and you started practicing that that kind of
lined up with your expectations?It did.
I mean, again, lucky enough to have, but by choosing something
where I had control over, you know, my schedule and my place
of work, the type of practice I wanted to do, I ended up with a
lot of control over my lifestyleso that I could, I mean, you
(14:21):
still obviously have to show up and do the work.
Yeah, but it did provide all thethings that I expected it to
because that's what I was working for.
And again, you at some point youmake these decisions.
You're like, hey, man, I I'm working this number of hours,
seeing this number of patients. I need more money or I need more
time off. There are trade-offs to those
(14:42):
things, but you get to make kindof those decisions.
And if you, you know, if I couldhave done orthopedic surgery and
made a bunch more money and had a much worse life schedule,
right. So you just being able to decide
what's kind of important to you and craft that.
It turned out medicine provided that for me because I chose that
(15:02):
path. There were a lot of paths
available and again you pick theone that fits what what you want
your life to be like all. Right.
Were there any paths on that idea?
If there were a lot of paths available, were there other
paths that you considered going down?
I considered, you know, I reallylike babies, like delivering
babies. I thought that was great.
But again, pathway for like an OBGYN or something, it was a lot
(15:24):
of surgery and other stuff that I did not enjoy.
I really just like the babies part.
So again, family practice let meat least see babies and with the
potential for doing deliveries again, I didn't want that on
call 24/7 for a lifestyle all. Right.
(15:47):
When you come to approach thinking about lifestyle, what
is kind of if you were able to chop it up into like a pie chart
of the things that are importantto you and the way that you're
defining it into certain elements, whether that's time
with family money, ability to set your own schedule.
What does that kind of look likefor you?
I'd say you know, probably 50% at least is time with family.
(16:09):
How much you know can I do there?
And again, do you have the flexibility to suddenly shift,
shift gears and and do less workand more family if it's needed?
But yeah, 50% family, probably 25% income.
(16:30):
I've been broke. I've been really broke.
You know, like am I going to payrent or electricity kind of
broke? So, you know, I wanted a lot of
stability there. Again, I didn't need, I don't
need to drive a, you know, BMWI don't need my mansion.
But I definitely wanted to get away from worrying about the
day-to-day. So at least 25% was financial
(16:56):
and then only the remaining 25% was the work I was doing.
Sure, I would think you know. I want to keep talking about
money a little bit and I kind ofwant to go back to being in Med
school and applying to Med school, talking about how being
financially stable is very important to you.
How'd you weigh that against going to Med school and spending
(17:18):
time at school? I know Med school is not cheap
and you might not have a lot of time to do work to earn money
during that. How'd you kind of weigh that and
how would you make sure that that wasn't maybe necessarily
100% always top of mind and you're able to stay focused on
studies as well? So you know, when you're in Med
school, you get a little, you borrow more than the tuition.
(17:41):
You, you got to borrow a certainamount to live on over a period
of time. So, but it was as much or equal
to what I've been earning previously.
So it's still doable. I was again, lucky enough, I
then got married and my wife hasstarted working.
So there was definitely some significant income there, but
not enough to pay for medical school, obviously.
(18:02):
It was just really, and I, I didsome, what I would think of as
poorer planning by going to Saint Louis University rather
than East Tennessee State or, you know, Memphis.
I had some other options for medical school, but I chose the
one I thought was, I don't know the best, but I thought it was
also in Saint Louis and I had some roots here.
(18:24):
So I thought I'd want to do that, but it cost me a lot more
money. I was always just convinced I
would have earned enough to pay it back, which is sort of true.
I mean, I I'll have it paid off in another five years or so.
OK, so. Like realistically, I'm, I'm
almost 60, I'll be paid off justbefore that.
(18:46):
So, so I could have made it a lot, a lot cheaper, but it's
hard to be upset with those decisions you make if you have
the life you want. Yeah.
Then then yeah, you, you made a decision.
Maybe you, maybe you have a little, a little less, you
incurred a little more debt thanyou should have, but these are
not deal breaker things. You can work around it.
(19:08):
Yeah, All right. And like you said to, you kind
of created the life that you want, and that's clearly seems
to be the most important thing to you, so that's great.
All right, Curious, film is verycreative by nature.
Have there kind of been any waysthat you've feel like you've
lacked that? Sure, sure.
(19:29):
I, I mean, I, I, like I said, I really enjoy like storytelling
and stuff like that. So I mean, at some point and I
would, you know, when the girls were little, they'd tell me a
couple of things and I would make up a story for them for
bedtime, that kind of stuff where I would just Princess
Cooper and Princess Josephine's stories and tell them that they
were the stars that so, you know, the little, little things
(19:52):
that you enjoy doing, you can doon your own.
I I've, you know, started writing, you know, I don't know,
probably 10 years ago wrote somechildren's book stuff like, you
know, and mostly, you know, trying kind of rehashing the
stories that I had, some of the stories I told them that I then
turned into books and stuff. So, you know, it's not like I've
gone and published them or anything, but they're written,
(20:15):
Yeah, they're in a box, you know, basically.
So you find ways to to express those other things you want to
do just because you want to do them, not because they're your.
Career I also, they were cheerleaders and I would, I
would video their competitions and put together some end of
year stuff that like memory videos of, of, of what the team
(20:38):
did that year. So again, just because I, I that
was part of that sort of need for a creative outlet.
So you find ways to do that other stuff too.
That's great. Have you ever thought about
publishing the books, The children's books?
Yeah, it's a lot of work. Sure, I can imagine.
I mean, the books are done. I've had them edit it.
(20:59):
I've had them, you know, I belong to a writer's group.
So I, I would go to that every week and we would go over
chapters and twos and stuff. I've I've read other people's
works as a beta reader, You know, a lot of people in the
group have have published books,but the amount of dedication
that you put into just trying toget someone to read the damn
(21:23):
thing. It turned out it takes a lot and
I got, you know, I got kind of fed up with with the idea.
I did have publishing world thatwork slowly.
I, I did get a contract for one of the children's books and
then, I don't know, the illustrator quit or something
happened and then this other project took priority.
So I've still got a contract. I've still got a thing sitting
(21:43):
out there that might one day actually happen, but I don't
know. It's, it's years of extra effort
even after you find someone to read it and want to publish it.
It's even a couple of years beyond that.
So one of the most interesting things I did with that was I, I
had an editor, somebody read it and they were like, this is
fantastic. It's great.
(22:05):
You get it. You just got to change all this.
And I'm like, OK, so essentiallywhat you've just told me in this
e-mail is you'd love what I've done.
It's fantastic except for all the words I've written.
That's all that has to change. And that's that's part of it,
right? You've written a thing, you
think it's good. You send it out to somebody and
then they want to change a bunchof stuff.
And so you have to constantly listen to kind of what they want
(22:29):
to do with what you've already done.
I imagine musicians have the same kind of struggle where
they're like, this is the piece of music and then some producer
goes, I well, yeah, but we're going to put these drums over
here. Well, that doesn't fit.
So at that point, I got kind of kind of fed up with it.
Again, I already told you I don't like having bosses.
(22:50):
So. So I still got all these things
written, but. And at some point I will
probably, now that all my children are in college,
dedicate the time to trying to get it published.
But you could always self publish.
I suppose I could just throw them up on Amazon now, but I
feel like that's not that's cheating.
Sure, sure. OK.
(23:11):
You know, I mean, like I said, Imean people can do it, but then
again, the work, you got to go and try and market it and get
people to click on your thing and you know, so there's all
kinds of algorithms and stuff you have to be involved with.
And again, that seems like not the part of the work I wanted to
do. I'm curious, were there any
sorts of inspiration as well, not just from your time with
(23:33):
your daughters, but then also your career and being a family
practitioner? Were there inspirations that you
drew from working with children or other people and being a
doctor? Wow.
I mean, so I don't know, like I said, I've always been kind of
in that storyteller vein, right?That's the film and video
production, all that kind of stuffs you take inspiration from
(23:55):
all over. But I've always been like, you
know, fantasy fiction kind of person.
So I, I read a lot and you just maybe take some inspiration from
the structure of those stories. But then as well, the more
knowledge you get, no knowledge is wasted.
So everything I learned in film and video, everything I learned
by reading, everything I, you know, learned by in medicine all
(24:19):
plays into that at some point oranother.
There's actually, you know, one part of a book that that where
there's a pretty bad wound. And so, you know, you draw on
your information from medicine for that.
You know, I wouldn't say it totally fits together with the
(24:40):
the medicine part, but it comes up.
Yeah, for sure it would be. I would honestly be a little
more concerned. I think that if you said that
everything that you ever did in medicine was translated into a
children's book, I think that that would Personally, the idea
of having that as a children's book scares me a little bit.
Yeah, me too. There's a lot of fluids and
aromas in doctoring that it's not always pleasant so.
(25:04):
If the approach that you've taken of having kind of building
your career around this lifestyle, if there were
somebody who it was in a similarposition to you where they've
studied whatever it is that theystudied and realized it wasn't
quite the lifestyle for them, what would you recommend?
My thoughts are don't think of the reasons you can't change
because there's always going to be financial obligations and
(25:26):
family obligations, other kinds of things.
There's lots of reasons you can't, but it doesn't stop you
from thinking about what's possible.
Go and look at at what's possible.
What with what I currently have,how what do I not like about my
job? What do I want to do?
That's going to be, you know, better about that situation to,
(25:48):
to make me happier at work, whatever that work is.
And then try to find ways aroundyour obstacles.
Once you realize what you can't do, why you can't do those
things. Is there another way to, to get
it done? Once again, I, you know, I could
have said OK, right? You know, I can't get loans and
I can't get grants. I, you know, I don't want to
(26:09):
invest all this money in it. Well, I mean, if I hadn't, I
wouldn't have gotten, you know, to this place.
So you say, well, I, I think I can manage it if I do it in
these small parts and I can afford that.
Maybe that maybe you go to nightschool because it doesn't take
too much time out of, you know, your time and energy out of
your, your life and your family.Think positively, What do I
(26:29):
want? And then think about the steps
you can take to get there. And and you'll find that almost
everything is doable is doable. It's inspiring, know a lot of
people kind of get hung up on that idea of it's very much and
Med school definitely isn't a easy natural transition and
(26:50):
you've talked about how much work you put into kind of to get
through that and stick with it. And that's really inspiring.
Thank you so much. I don't have any other questions
for you. Are there any final pieces of
advice that you have, or anything more that you'd like to
bring up? It mostly centers around
everything I just kind of talkedabout.
What about your life? Do you not want to be that way?
(27:11):
And and how can you maneuver to change it?
Because if you don't consider the possibilities, you'll never
change, You'll never shift. If all you're thinking about is
reasons you are stuck, you can'tget unstuck.
Yeah. All right.
Well, thank you so much, Jeff. This has been a great
conversation. I appreciate your time.
(27:31):
Hey, it was a lot of fun. Appreciate it.
Yeah, Ill. You know what?
I got to show mine as well. I, I and I.
All right. Thank you Jeff, I hope you
enjoyed the episode. If you have any thoughts,
feedback or just want to say hi,shoot me an e-mail at
nickreroutedpod.com. If you liked the show, leave a
review, give us a follow and subscribe.
(27:54):
You can find links to our website and socials in the
description below. I'm looking forward to seeing
you next week.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.