first pay cheque

oops so this is a little overdue but i got my first pay cheque towards the end of august and it was an insult. i hate to sound like an ingrate but four years of lawsch, bar exam and training contract, being called to the bar, five years of medical school and after all this i get <£10/h before tax. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? granted, law school and advocate&solicitor qualifications count for diddly squat but omg it was such an insult and i almost burst into tears. sorry, sorry, it's horribly gauche to talk about money and i get that. but my umbrage at being so underpaid has yet to die down, despite it being more than two months since said 'first pay cheque'. i can think of many other (respectable) jobs that pay >£10/h but let's not go there. 

i remember sitting in the mess, desperately trying to get my phone banking to work so i could check my bank balance and once i jumped through the myriad of online banking hoops, realised i needn't have been so eager. i'd heard pay was bad and having started work without a contract and with no idea of terms (salary, leave etc) i didn't really know what to expect. recognise that price and value are two separate things but have also seen the wanton waste that goes on within the system which makes me even angrier at how little i take home. if there was a silver lining to this, maybe i'd be better able to console myself by thinking about the long game, how the income curve is steep. but it isn't, and things don't look much better especially with the high taxes. yet it's a choice, isn't it. a choice to remain in the UK for my GMC registration, a choice to indulge my quarter-life crisis and retrain then switch career paths. could've remained a barrister and be earning easily 10x this by now. much as i'd like to be altruistic and say i'm not in this for the money, i also think there's something to be said about fair renumeration. for the work i do and daily risks i'm exposed to, i think that's definitely worth more than £10/h. #dangermoney, indeed.