Cav, keep in mind that after that residency, depending on your specialty, you can do a hell of a lot better. My sister right now is working pretty much six or seven hours a day, and making out nicely. Her opinion on the difficulty of med school is that it wasn't too hard, but then she had just finished her undergrad at MIT so that probably skewed things a wee bit.
I think the residency is comparable to the CFI stage of a professional pilot. When you break down the hours spent working versus your total comp, you'd be better off flipping burgers but it's something you've got to go through in order to get where you want.
Who says we don't have the apprentice system in America any more?
