a heart is a heavy burden

Whitaker has 3 older brothers. He was raised on a farm in Nebraska where it's implied he was the runt of the litter and subject to frequent power plays from his brothers where he's had to learn to stand his ground. A lot of rough housing and sibling bullying implied by his description of them. I presume that informs Whitaker's reaction to Langdon when he's confronted by a dynamic where he feels like he's being sonned by an older man he's unfamiliar with in a workplace.

The line he says to Langdon.

You can play whatever part you like. Just don't pick mine for me.

Mohan is an 4th year Emergency Medicine resident. A fellowship is merely specialized training for her before her return to Emergency Medicine. A fellowship in Ultrasound or Geriatrics would mean that she returns as an Emergency Medicine physician with extra skills focused on Ultrasound or Geriatrics that makes her more competitive for an attending position, with a potential boost in pay, and she'd be the first one the other physicians defer to if they have a patient requiring those specific skills. She could work in the ED, EDOU, or ICU, but she is still considered a Emergency Medicine physician unless she decides to do another residency and double boards in something like General Surgery. Even if she's off-service, she's an Emergency Medicine physician.

A fellowship isn't necessary for you to advance in your career, and a fellowship wouldn't require anyone to leave the institution they trained at as a resident if the fellowship is located within the same system. Garcia is on screen to prove my point. It is extremely difficult to leave in the middle of your 4th year as a resident without a mark on your record unless you experienced extreme workplace harassment or injury. The excuse they could use for next season is that it's her day off or she took a month long opportunity to pad her skills and make her more competitive for fellowship applications. An attending can apply for fellowships, although few do because the pay cut and excess workload of a fellow feels like an insult after the attending lifestyle.

She's a 3rd year medical student. She's not being paid. She wouldn't even be particularly helpful, except maybe for sliding papers through the scanner, but you have people who are paid by the hour for that job. She can't even start a chart or prescribe meds. She's supposed to be supervised the entire time. Medical students slow down the whole rhythm and system.

The math for me when I was an intern... I was making $14/hour. Maybe a cute $18/hour in my 3rd year unless I was moonlighting. Not including what taxes take away.

But, if I were advising the current medical students, this is what I would say:

Javadi is definitely good for Emergency Medicine with a CCM fellowship, or any specialty her heart desires and fulfills her. I hope what she does choose pisses off her parents and teaches Shamsi to stop trying to press her into a mold. Yes, both parents. Shamsi has the busier schedule and someone else had to be responsible for transporting the child prodigy to university.

Ogilvie should abandon Emergency Medicine and go into Anesthesia with a CCM fellowship. The way he responds to traumas, especially with that leg in E10, would've had me taking him out of the room into the lounge for a talk and putting him in Tetris corner. He can intubate as much as he wants there and it would allow him to work in more areas of the hospital to gain perspective while playing an integral part of a team and having less attachments to patients.

My favorite medical student could look me in the eye right now, pinky promise that they did everything right, and I would still say OK, loser, let's prove it together and I'll buy you ice cream and a Monster if you didn't fuck anything up.

Another thing on the forefront of my mind is that I would like for Shamsi to see a true medical nepotism baby in action so she can be grateful for the daughter she currently has and so she learns something. I'm talking a medical student with Chief of Ophthalmology for a parent, or another branch full of nepotism. A medical student that will complain to their physician parent in the middle of the work day to get them to verbally brawl with the attending or resident of the current rotation they're on that gave them a bad eval or won't let them perform an R2 procedure.

It really doesn't help that The Pitt showcases families being torn apart left and right from children dying to parents dying to deportations, and then there's Shamsi who is disappointed in her daughter for not being a surgeon. Javadi can't even confidently say that her mother would love her if she didn't fit the exact mold her mother carved out for her after sacrificing 8 years of her life for it. That's almost half her life as of right now.