Zellsis "becoming a surgeon is easier" Ted talk

Rant to put into perspective how hard becoming a surgeon is. I am a fan of Zellis but he made a really dumb statement. Also pardon my grammar, my english is bad. i mean no disrespect as I can tell he is just really ignorant about this which is not his fault but I hope he can grow from this and have a greater appreciation for health services in general. Literally getting into a majority of any of the health service jobs is harder and its not close. This includes nurses as well btw, becoming a nurse is harder as well. Finally before i start my rant, I agree they should be paid a lot and I am not discounting a pros struggle but he needs to get a better understanding of this topic. Not just him, but most people do not have the slightest clue how hard it is and I will give you a rough idea of how hard it is. My explanation leaves out a lot of information as well but I will just simplify it all.

TDLR: hard to get into med school, hard when you are finally in med school cause everyone's dummy smart, getting into surgeon residency is hard, being in surgeon residency is hard, nothing is a guarantee as you can fail out of your program + you leave with debt. Being a pro is less stressful and easier. If he said "Maintaining a job as a doctor is easier than maintaining a pro job cause the pro scene is more volatile", I would probably agree there BUT becoming a surgeon is sooooooooo much harder than becoming a pro its not relatively close. becoming a doctor is hard, if half these pros could they would but they cant (its true dont be mad). barrier to entry into the pro scene is not as high as in the medical scene. You have more opportunity to become a pro than to become a doctor cause you need such elevated credentials + requirements to get into med school + get into a hyper-competitive surgeon residency program. Also disrespectful to tell a doctor/surgeon that their path was essentially "guaranteed". maintaining a pro job is probably harder however this is debatable in some aspects.

Actual facts I will present

bro his comparison to a surgeon was actually really bad. I understand the point he is making BUT he is talking about the requirements for a profession he has 0 knowledge about. Let me put into perspective how hard becoming a surgeon is. In general to even get into a good med school you need to be in the top percentile of applications which is already fucking hard cause its not just grades that matter. You need 100s of hours of experience which includes clinical, volunteering, shadowing, extracurriculars + a crazy good gpa, good references, a great MCAT (which is hard cause the mcat is fucking hard test). Again this is a general requirements as some med schools can be different and getting in with a lower GPA or lower hours is possible but you need to make it by having a great foundation in the other application parts which I mentioned.

getting into med school is really fucking hard, and i simplified the requirements. When you enter med school, you enter a pool of hyper-intelligent people who are already smart, hyper motivated, and hyper active in this field of study. The barrier to get into med school is crazy but then to become a surgeon which is a specialization requires you to fight for a preferred slot against the smartest bunch of people you will interacted with up until med school. Like i need you to think about, imagine if you were competing against 100 of your schools valedictorians or someone who works harder than that in order to get into your program + get into your preferred residency. Then you need to maintain a certain level of marks against those said smart people which is hard again cause med school is not a guaranteed success + work you have to put in to be at the top of a class filled with crazy intelligent people who eat, sleep and breathe med school.

So you do countless hours in your undergrad (yes your 4 years of med school is considered an undergrad, at least thats what i was told). And getting into a surgeon program is not a guarantee because only the smartest people in your class get into their preferred choice + actually doing your specialization/residency for becoming a surgeon is fucking hard. YOU are not guaranteed a surgeon job just cause you get into med school. Becoming a pro in valorant is significantly easier, and there is no argument to be made in this aspect. LIKE YOU ARE NOT GUARANTEED ANYTHING IF YOU GET INTO MED SCHOOL, THE DROP OUT RATE IS BETWEEN 15-20%. THEN THE PEOPLE WHO REMAIN ARE THE HYPERMOTIVATED AND HYPER SMART PEOPLE WHO WORK THEIR ASS OFF FOR THEIR PROGRAM. The difficulty in becoming a surgeon can not be described unless you actually lived through it, I am an aspiring doctor and I can only give you a rough idea. Every doctor i have talked to has told me that their time in med school was fucking hard and that residency is not a pre-determined outcome + all this information in this post.

Also someones gonna make the arguement "well at least you get paid in residency".... bro you literally get paid below minimum wage based on the hours you work. Like the amount you make obvs differs but in general you work more hours and get paid less if you did the math. A pro can practice like 8hrs a day and still have time to another job, you do not have the same luxury when you are doing your residency. Also the amount of debt you have after med school literally can take decades to pay even with a super high salary. Imagine your debt from undergrad then debt from med school. being a pro is less stressful and less risky. You have less to worry about imo. If you fail med school you literally get 100s of thousands of dollars in debt without a degree + years of wasted time. If you fail to become a pro at least you have other options without the large debt. Failing med school means a large debt to pay off unless you're rich. If you market yourself well, stream + youtube + other side gigs, which is hard, but all this is still a pretty easy alternative to med school.

Now i would agree that remaining a pro is harder than maintaining your job as a doctor cause when youre a doctor you're pretty much smooth sailing unless some crazy shit happens. Staying a pro is harder than staying a doctor but becoming a pro vs becoming a doctor is not comparable at all. Like at all. So pro val/pros in any video game should be paid a lot because they also generate that much revenue for the esport they are in. becoming a pro is hard, being a pro is hard, staying as a pro is hard so I hope they get their bread. I think they should be paid a shit ton and I do not really care about them making more than some doctors. Yes a lot of people assume you go into med because you make a lot but 90% of people do not stay/do med school for that purpose. TBH you could do a trade school and be really well off without the med school debt, you do med cause you genuinely want to help people NOT just cause of the money. I would say doctors and nurses should be paid more but them making less than pro valorant players is not a problem in my opinion. These matters are just separate issues. If you want to compare incomes then compare incomes between pros in different pro scenes, unfair to compare pros to doctors IMO.

Thank you for reading my ted talk, love you zellsis. No hate cause being a pro seems hard but I would talk to a doctor and get their perspective to understand why its hard and how disrespectful your comments are to the people who became doctors. Telling them that becoming a surgeon was basically a "guarantee" is really disrespectful to them and how hard they worked to serve the community. YES doctors serve the community, its not just money-hungry dick head. You will meet some people like that but in general they want to help people, you just become desensitized cause dealing with death/sickness/injuries all day is mentally hard so being emotionally detached from patients helps keep you sane (in some cases).

someone ask chat to make this shorter thx

I heard some open heart surgeries literally takes 30 hours and you can't take breaks. Like they just stand there for that long while doing some of the most complex and precise shit and 1 mistake can end the patient's life.

fax

read tldr if you think I wrote too much, again no hate to any pro as I respect them and what they do for the community but this notion that being a pro is harder than being a doctor needs to be discussed. I regret the "if you would then you could" part but that's more of a light roast/banter. I am not being that serious when i wrote that. Love you all, have a good day. If you disagree then write in chat and I am happy for my opinion to change even if I wrote that its not debatable. Its not debatable but if there a person who became a surgeon and then became a pro, who said becoming a pro was harder then I will change my mind lol.

becoming a surgeon is wayy harder than becoming a pro. but job security is way less in pro scene(doesn't necessarily mean its a bad career, just can't stop the grind or someone else will fill ur place) than in being a surgeon. another thing is that you can never stop learning the game you have to keep updating yourself which isnt that demanded in being a doctor

As a med student, i wholeheartedly agree with this fact. Anyone with the right mind wouldn't be saying stupid shit like this lol

zellsis is just mad coping lmao, becoming either a surgeon or a physicist/mathematicians is a trillion times harder and takes far more hard work and skill than becoming a pro, and moreover, these jobs actually contribute to humanity's progress unlike being a video game player

I'm in med school in Italy, and from my point of view he's not totally wrong. Maybe I'm biased cause in Italy is not THAT hard to become a surgeon (mostly because a lot of surgery specializations such as general surgery aren't very evaluated, unfortunately). Probably in the US is way harder, but just talking about numbers, there are less than 200 players in tier 1 in the whole World, so it's a way lower percentage of people who become pros. Also there are other factors such as nepotism, that we all know that is a thing in esport (also in hospitals lol, but I think it has a smaller impact), and the fact that if you're not super talented you have to start playing at a very young age. Now, I'm not saying becoming a surgeon is easy, cause I know it's not and I know what I'm talking about, but seeing this from another point of view he's not totally wrong.
(Sorry for my grammar)

We get it bro you went to med school

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Didn't see what zellsis said, but if someone compares valorant to being a surgeon. I don't think they're being serious, chill

we powerscaling jobs

not sure why this would even be contestable by any reasonable pro, but ig good job breaking this down

How delusion and egotistical do you have to be to say something like this

The average esports pro is super lazy and overpaid
Actually one of the easiest jobs

Surgeons work 100000000000x harder and are NEEDED for society to function

zellsis is low iq

being a pro player is an easier job than being a surgeon

but becoming a surgeon is easier than becoming a valorant pro, just because of supply and demand.

Only the top 0.0001% of valorant players can ever become a pro, whereas around 15% of med students make it through school

I agree with you, odd to hear my son speak like this... I will have a word with him tonight.

Only thing I'd argue against is the fact that a lot less people can become a tier 1 pro than a surgeon, but that's simply due to limited slots, the rest of your point still stands and it is a hell of a lot harder to become a surgeon.

"Being a small twitch streamer is harder than your 9-5" type beat

Great evaluation of the topic on hand. I agree with you, and I also think we should have a greater appeciation for public service workers in general.

final thoughts after reading some of the replies:

let me ask you, what are the actual qualifications to become a pro, how hard is it to get those qualifications, how many people have those qualifications, and how many people are you competing against with similar qualifications?

If you think about it like this and I did a break down on the IVY League med schools for example to have a comparable example to the franchise teams You would see that its much harder on the surgeon side. just cause you have more people trying to become a pro does not mean all of them have comparable resumes. I would say you are competing against a smaller pool of pros for a spot as not many people have the qualifications to become on in franchising. Getting these qualifications is hard but manageable.

What i said in previous comments about IVY leagues if I were to compare them to franchising;

The standard to get into an IVY league is already stupidly high, to get that qualification is also really hard, to then have to do this multiple times in order to be eligible to become a surgeon in an Ivy League is as you described it "statistically impossible'. You are competing with such a larger pool of people to become a surgeon with a similar qualification because they give you a rough idea of what is required and the likelihood a person actually becoming a surgeon at these schools is literally close to 0 if you take into account the process from highschool to your preferred residency. Like think about how many people start on the road to get into an IVY league, how many people get accepted into the undergrad? How many people then accepted into the med program, how many people then get accepted into the residency program of their choice. Like the competition to become a surgeon is sooooo much higher than becoming a pro that its actually not a debate if you broke it down further.

Surgeon as an occupation could be argued to be much harder than being a pro player. There is one specific reason for this: lives are on the line. If you mess up ONE surgery, you have to live with the guilt of endangering/causing someone to lose their life. On top of that, your surgeon qualifications will have a high chance of being revoked. If you make a mistake in VALORANT, no biggie. Of course, if you repeatedly do so you may lose your job but that’s the same for every job. The two jobs are both respectable. However, the scale between health services and esports is too great of a difference to make a justifiable comparison.

well i always knew zellsis was immature and braindead but this now it is painful to even try to understand how his brain works. It needs to be studied because how can one person be so delusional.

• anyone defending his claim is as stupid as zellsis because who in the right mind overlook the hardwork AND money needed to be qualified (to be 'qualified' you need around 10 years or more, going through med student, intern, resident, fellow, and attending) and say being qualified pro gamer is harder?

Literally 30 people in all of NA are Tier 1 valorant players. 30 people in all of North America. Statistically speaking, he's not wrong.

nuh uh