Although it has been quite some time since my last post, rest assured that I – along with my classmates – were diligently at work, grinding through pathophysiology of kidney disease and Obtaining Outside Medical Reco—haha, no, we were all on vacation.
I went home to D.C., played with my dog, went to Colombia for two weeks, and drank on the beach enough to poison the Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading
My time at the VA intensive care unit has come to a close, and while I am currently enrolled in a class (name: “Medical Imaging and Anatomy,” actual name, “Nate Gives Absolutely No F*cks”), what I’m actually doing is just twiddling my thumbs until it’s time to match on Friday. Continue reading
I’ve written twice before about funky medical words – once in first year, with Commonest Erythematous Palpation, and once at the end of second year with A Lexical Update. As I hit the big orange “CERTIFY” button on the rank list page last week, I realized that there is a completely different dictionary for the fourth year medical student.
As useless extra hands in the hospital go, we have basically completed our penance and have become experts in the Med Student Daily Apologia For Being An Idiot. In celebration, many of us – yours truly included – took huge chunks of time off to apply for and interview at residency programs. The process, while fun and exhausting and replete with enormous amounts of Netflix binge-watching, also generated a lexicon all on its own. Continue reading
Two things right up front:
With that said, I write this post while experiencing a fairly complex, ebbing and flowing mix of trepidation, desperation, apathy, and outright nihilism. These are the emotions of a compromised fourth year student with a willpower wellspring shallower than a lunchbox. When you do nothing for almost three months, your brain atrophies; at this point, all I’m really capable of doing is following the smells of free food and clicking “Yes, I’m Still Watching” on the Netflix popup. This bodes poorly for my ICU rotation starting tomorrow. Continue reading
I have three interviews left before I have only to sit down in an echo chamber and perform the mental equivalent of processing pasta dough – taking all the raw information and feelings from the last two months and distilling them down into a rank list.
It’s amusing, really, to think back on how things have changed since the September days of waiting anxiously by the computer for an interview to come in. This pregnant waiting period was only interrupted when disappointed by yet another CALL TO ACTION!, or alert about a very important lecture series where there will be FREE PIZZA if you will just RSVP, but that’s neither here nor there. Continue reading
As I wrote in PANIC! At the ERAS, the final step in obtaining a spot in a residency program is the Match. Like I mentioned, after all the interviews everyone’s preferences – and the preferences of all of the programs – go into a big computer and get processed through some algorithm, which somehow pops out a “best match.” This process is administered by one central service, called the National Resident Matching Program, or NRMP, so they control everything from start to finish. Continue reading
Am I still a medical student? I am legitimately no longer sure.
In the last four weeks, I’ve flown to five different cities, taken a two-week family vacation to Japan, stayed in enough hotel rooms to bankrupt a minor consulting firm, and worn a suit enough to notice that I am clearly fatter than when I had it first tailored in 2012. Continue reading
Interview season is crazy and exhausting and fun and exhausting and AWESOME.
For those of you who are nonmedical, interview season is the fourth year winter when all other medical school responsibilities evaporate like a bottle of wine at a Thanksgiving dinner political discussion. No clinical responsibilities, easily avoidable committee responsibilities, sometimes cancel-able friend responsibilities.
If anyone asks you for something that you don’t want to do, you just say, “oh, sorry, I have an interview.” Continue reading
Holy crap, interviews.
The first thing you should know about medical school interviews is that your medical student is supposed to go on a lot of them, and that they all blend together into one big Vitamix of tours, catered lunches, and Powerpoint presentations. Continue reading
ERAS is in, my away rotations are done, and I’m stuck here waiting for interview invitations along with the other 100% of 4th year medical students. Well, except the two loudly proclaiming to all who will listen, “I HAVE SO MANY INVITES GUYS SO MANY INVITES!”
You know who you are. Continue reading
crashing resident 