Explaining to my family

Echo what everyone else is saying just show them your paystub... then show them the salary trajectory and build a financial model comparing their earnings to your projected earnings over your career, accounting for time value of money and student loans (remember the debt schedule, I think you can get PIK interest loans for residency these days...). Also you may want to probability adjust for socialized medicine... Haha no, I am kidding.

For real tho, my girlfriend is a med student and her dad is head of cardio thoracic surgery at a major research hospital while her mom is a very successful plastic surgeon. Have fun explaining that one...

Honestly, the way I broke through to them was when I was working at a local investment bank I showed them a deal we worked on and her dad called up the CEO who they knew well. He sang the praises of his bankers and how much value they provided. I believe his words were "the most important advisors in my life, much more impactful than my attorneys and accountants. If I had known what IB was when I was starting my career that would have been my first job."

Now with all of that aside... I still think the best way is to just show them a transaction (if you have one you worked on even better) and explain to them the role the bankers played. Its easier to explain the job that way and getting them to understand that while our hours in powerpoint add much less value then being in an operating room, overtime all of those hours add up into massive transactions. Also this job is more like medicine than most people would realize. Both are learning how to dissect, understand, and treat systems. Just one is the human body and the other is a business.