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As promised, I fell behind severely in updating the medical school aspect of this blog. Some of this was due to the application and interview season (no walk in the park, more on this later) and a larger chunk was due to the face that the 4th year of medical school (the second half anyway) is a better version of senior year of high school. Classes (if you’re even taking any) don’t matter. No one’s going to fail you. People start taking “rotations” where you get out by noon – and that’s if you’re an overachiever. End result: lots of beer, video games (SC2 ee han timing), wine tastings, road trips, karaoke, bar hopping, etc. Of course, we were all paying full tuition for the privilege of non-education, but I didn’t hear anyone complaining. Anyways, those carefree days are now a distant memory with the start of residency looming, but they will be fond memories nonetheless.
What was interview season like? It varies immensely on what specialty you are applying for, and whether you are competitive for that specialty. Family medicine applicants enjoyed lots of wining and dining from residency programs (i.e. free hotels and whatnot), and had the peace-of-mind of only having to go on several interviews to ensure a spot. Dermatology applicants gobbled up every precious interview offer with the voracity of JulyZerg on a desert island, and absolutely went to every single one with a shit-eating grin in the hopes of matching (about 50% is average afaik). Anesthesiology (my specialty) is somewhere in the middle of the road in competitiveness, about the same as emergency medicine and general surgery.
I went on about 20 interviews concentrated on both coasts. During that period when interview offers started to arrive, every e-mail alert was met with some mixture of anticipation and anxiety. Offer? Rejection? Thank you for clicking “submit”, we’ll let you know? I think I saw a classmate posting their interview offers on facebook – epic d-baggery, even for med school.
At some point in time, the novelty and excitement of travel and interviewing wears off, and the wonderful things you hear about the programs starts to blend together. The interview days themselves start to become like bad reruns. Some examples (mediocre rants incoming):
- The dreaded “do you have any questions?” question. This versatile little bastard can be snuck into any part of the interview day, from the morning greeting to the hospital tour to the actual interviews. It is laughably overused to the point of becoming a meta-question, i.e. “you guys are probably sick of hearing this, but does anyone have questions?” Every applicant has a few go-to questions (insightful and well thought-out, of course) to fire off in any given situation, lest you come across as uninterested. You would think it’s every applicant’s dream to hear “great question!” as a reply.
- The absolute same small talk every interview day morning (times 20, remember). What are you supposed to say to fellow applicants (with whom you’re competing and will probably never see again, and on top of that everyone knows that everyone else is being fake nice)? Here’s what everyone talks about: schools, hometowns, and the weather. If there was a pre-interview dinner, you might get a few flaccid remarks about how nice all the residents were and how great the food was.
- The un-pleasantness and awkwardness of wearing a suit all day when a good portion of the people you talk to are wearing scrubs (aka pajamas). They were few and far between, but the programs that told us to wear scrubs to the interview day still hold a special place in my heart.
After interview season, the big event was making a rank list and match day. I’ve already gone through the details of that in a previous post. I feel pretty much the same about it now that I’ve gone through it. There were people in non-joyous tears. There were lots of handshakes and congratulations. There were some over-loud squeals of joy (you know the type). In retrospect, it was nice to have this “graduation” of sorts with mostly just classmates. The actual graduation day is a bloated event. It’s hard to talk to friends with everyone’s entourage in tow. And it ultimately means less to most students than match day.
So here I am, a month removed from graduation and about 15 hours before my first day of residency. Some things about medical school that I think I think:
1. There are many more people who are qualified to be physicians than choose to do so and/or are granted admission to medical school.
2. There are, unfortunately, a few people in any given class that probably should not practice medicine.
3. In any hospital, there will be politicians, ladder-climbers, and people who have no interest in doing anything above the minimum required for their jobs.
4. Hospitals are also full of excellent teachers, role models, and genuinely good people who enjoy what they do and have in their hearts to go out of their way to help out the bumbling medical student.
5. If you are in a MD/PhD program, you are of a special breed and I salute you.
6. It is important to do things right, but you also have to make an effort to show people that you are doing things right.
7. The average student cannot choose between studying hard every day and heavy cramming right before exams. You must do both, in one form or another.
8. Not everyone loves gross anatomy.
9. If you interview at a medical school, you should not, under any circumstances, decide to go there based on anything a first-year student says to you. They will all love the school for reasons that will not matter to you over the long haul. Talk to 3rd or 4th year students if you can.
10. Take anyone’s advice regarding medical school with a grain of salt. Anecdotal evidence, even spoken with authority, is still anecdotal evidence. Except for #9. That is absolutely true.
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Very cool blog, Good Luck! 
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CA10824 Posts
awesome blog and congrats on matching anesthesiology!
if you don't mind answering, what med school are you attending and what program did you match at?
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thanks for the kind words, guys.
PM'd you with the answer, LosingID8.
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Congratulations! In retrospect I wish I picked a specialty that let me wear pajama's (scrubs) to work.
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United States10774 Posts
Congratulations man.
I am going to send your blogs to my sister, who is in the process of applying for medical schools right now. I am helping her edit those secondary essays and what not.
Good luck with rest of your pursuit. I can't imagine how difficult the path was. Applying and crossing your fingers alone seem overwhelming to me.
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My girlfriend is writing the mcats at the end of the summer.
We enjoyed reading this a lot.
Congrats, gonna go take a look at the rest of the blog.
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As my mother tells people I won't be a "real doctor", but I am getting my PhD and I just completed my comprehensive prelims today. I told myself that I would do nothing for at least 5 days after my comps, if I pass, but play sc2. So that is what I'm doing. :-D
Congrats to you. :-D
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Read through all your blogs when I should be working on secondaries. Thanks for putting in the work.
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Congrats man, glad to hear you've been able to balance out video games/partying and med school and be successful at it.
Definitely gives me some hope in my pursuit of a medical career.
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This is a really nice blog, thanks!
Did you do any research prior to or during medical school?
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On July 01 2011 07:25 pebblebeach wrote:
This is a really nice blog, thanks!
Did you do any research prior to or during medical school?
Prior to med school, I did some research that was basically bench work in a neuroscience lab. I did get a letter of rec out of it although it was never mentioned in any interviews so I can't say if it really helped me.
During the summer between ms1 and ms2, I did clinical research for a cardiology professor and actually ended up getting my name on a paper, which did come up in a few interviews (i.e. interviewers are so sick of the general questions that they'll latch onto anything that looks remotely unique).
Research is another hoop to jump through, like volunteering, shadowing, etc. It can help fill up some space on your CV. It can let you meet faculty in your field of interest. It shows some initiative and intellectual curiosity. Whether it will help you get interviews depends on the quality of your research, which specialty you are applying for, and the institution(s) to which you are applying.
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Congrats and good job on getting through school, interesting read for sure, but it leaves me wanting TT. Only time I've met an anesthesiologist was before my only surgery in which I was aware it was his job to keep me from waking up during neck surgery and also responsible for not killing me with the stuff he was using, he did both jobs perfectly which makes me have great respect for you even though I don't know you but that guy made a lasting impression. I've always wondered if all medical people were okay with all the gross shit that makes up the insides of our bodies so it's cool to see that's not in fact true. More blogs when you have time man, I admire you for getting through med school and being so honest about your experience! ^^ 5/5
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16937 Posts
Fun fact: the program/algorithm used to match residents to residencies is the same as the one that's used to match girls to sororities (the mutual rank system).
._.
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congrats! this blog was particularly interesting to me because i will be matriculating to uc davis med at the end of this month and I am anesthesiology is a specialty i might be interested in.
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My go to for the "Do you have any questions?" question is something along the lines of "I know why I think this program is a good fit for me, but why do you think this is an excellent program?", at least for interviews anyway.
Anyway, grats on matching. It baffles me how med education is set up such that students have to invest incredible amounts of effort/debt just for a "chance" at matching. Must really be soul-crushing if you don't match and have to go into transitional year. That's probably the only thing I'm afraid of concerning med school. Oh, and of course OB rotation.
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Is your prelim/transitional at the same place as your anesthesia residency?
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Thanks for the reply! I'm taking a year off as I apply schools right now. I hope to match into a good anesthesiology residency program in a few years as well. I wish you luck and hopefully you make it through all those sleepless nights ^^
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@RedDeckWins
Yes, same place. It's a sort of custom built anesthesia intern year with internal medicine wards, cardiology, ICU, surgery and some other stuff.
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EPT
