Family Medicine

I have 2 weeks 3 days and 18 hours until I'm officially done with my 3rd year of medical school. For those of you who don't know what exactly takes place third year here's a brief explanation. You do a series of rotations in the major areas of medicine (Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, General Surgery, Pediatrics, and OB/GYN) with the idea that you will use this time to learn a lot about medicine and ultimately choose what you want to do for the rest of your life. I have picked Family Medicine for my career and I am very happy with it. It has been interesting, however, to note other peoples' responses to me when I tell them this decision. "Oh, that's...nice" or "Really?!? Why?" or my personal favorite, "Don't do that!!"
Some of the reasons people disparage the General Practicioner are
1) It is a very non-competetive field to get into which unfortunately means that some people go into it because they can't get into anything else.
2) As with most primary care fields (fields where most families have this type of doctor - family doctor, pediatrician, etc.) get paid much less than other fields
3) Some people view Family Medicine doctors as knowing a little bit of everything, but not master of any.
There may be some validity to these arguments, but here are some of the reasons that I want to go into it.
1) As a family medicine doctor you can go almost anywhere in the world and be of use to people. I would love to test this theory and travel to some of these places and/or live in a small town.
2) You can have a fantastic affect on people's health over the course of their lives. I know many people won't change their ways, but I believe that there are many out there who will given the right opportunity
3) There is a lot of face-to-face time with patients and I really like spending time with people.
There are others, of course, but they are harder to define. The best way I can describe it is that it fits my personality and lifestyle.
(Though I curse my luck that I'm not interested in radiology. Man, great lifestyle)