Can anyone tell me anything about the process of becoming a psychiatrist and what to expect on the job?

A psychiatrist has an MD degree with a specialty in Psychiatry so you are looking at 12 years total after high school before you will be ready for hospital or private practice. And, unless your parents are very rich, you will have six figures of loan debt to pay off. Most newly minted psychiatrists do not go into private practice seeing mental health patients, they do clinical practice monitoring meds for people in therapy and getting up in the middle of the night to do intakes on drunks to see if they need to be on the psych ward or just in detox. Getting started in private practice is unbelievably costly and since most insurance doesn't pay for a real shrink but only for a psychiatric social worker or a psychotherapist with a masters degree or maybe a PhD there is not so much call for them. Take a good hard science major program in college so you qualify for med school and then decide. You have plenty of time.