It took 10 applications, 4 months and nearly a 100 calls to get a job interview after I was fresh out of school.
After the exercise and a formality handshake, I was given the job. Because of my inexperience, I was told a doctor will join me, oversee what I did and help reduce my learning curve.
I spent the first evening in a small consulting room expecting the said doctor to arrive as I kept thinking about the many cases that may come and I'd run out of steam on how to treat.
Tonsillitis came....no senior doctor
Seizure disorder came...no senior doctor.
I sprinted to my boss.
"I thought you said there'll be a doctor"
"Are you afraid to be alone?" he asked prosaically.
My salary was too small for me to have any ego. I always felt they were doing me a favor by employing me. But I hated the figure nonetheless. I cannot even tell you. It's that bad.
So I learnt hard on the job. Watched videos on how to do vital procedures and practiced hard on dolls and mattresses.
I improved my skills till we began to get referrals from other hospitals.
As soon as I saw my skills become shiny, I knew it was time for a raise.
I stopped my boss on his way home one evening and threw him the big question.
We went back and forth for about a minute and yes, I got a raise!
Young people generally don't do what I did.
They get irritated about work and rather than learn the ropes, they quickly want to earn the respect, the money, the freedom.
They get a corporate job and rather than stay(for a while), get some career capital, grow some top-level contact, make some money and more of it as they get proficient, they bolt out the door because looking at a computer for 16 hours/day is uninteresting.
Then they start a ramshackle business on the bill of gusto and enthusiasm; suffering and stumbling until they fold the enterprise up.
Before you are offered a raise, a freedom to do your thing or control over how you spend your time, your skills or your productivity, you have to pay your dues. Learn skills that people find it difficult to turn you down.
Don't be madly driven by the prospects of being called a CEO of a company that you want to be a cheap one because "you can't work under someone"
Learn. Then leave.
Not the other way around.
