Salary
Average Salary: $178,950
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $6,250,000
You may not plunge your hands into your patients' internal organs and tinker with their various valves and whatnot, but you are a doctor. You went through a ton of school, packed your brain cells to their brims with a million bits of data, and you provide a valuable service. Accordingly, you'd better get paid a pretty penny.
As it turns out, you do—but you won't get paid the pretty dime or quarter that most other doctors rake in annually. Your average psychiatrist makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $170,000 a year (source), with those in general medical and surgical facilities making on average slightly less, and those specializing in outpatient care and individual and family services making upwards of $200,000.
It's a nice living, but don't forget to factor in all those hundreds of thousands of dollars you've racked up in student loan debt. Might take you ten to twenty years to get it all paid off…if not longer. If that thought stresses you out, you can always seek the help of a qualified therapist to help you through it.