ERAS

The Fourth Year Lexicon

/ Nate / 3 Comments

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 →

Tail of the Trail

/ Nate / 2 Comments

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 →

How The Match Works

/ Nate / 9 Comments

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 →

PANIC! At the ERAS

/ Nate / 8 Comments

The inspiration for this blog, originally, was family – in particular, the Bringers of Life and their respective bringers of life. No, this is not an ode to a special love of family; I was really, really tired of explaining the medical school application process to everyone with my last name over and over again.

So I started writing down my explanations online – postbac program to knock out requirements, MCAT, complicated multi-stage application, interviews, second looks – and sending out links to spare myself. It’s been more than five years since my first post.

Sometime late this week, I will submit my application for residency. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll be applying to “match” in emergency medicine. The process is long, confusing, tortuous (in multiple definitions of the word), and culminates in Match Day. For those of you already in medicine, this post might be kind of boring. I will thus use far more GIFs than normal to keep you interested.

For everyone else, welcome to the madness that is the residency application. Continue reading →

Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants

/ Nate / 4 Comments

Okay I know I stole the title from a Michael Pollan book; it’ll make sense in a minute. Hang on.

When you apply to college, you write your personal statement. It should be powerful, well-written, interesting, full of your personality, and should catch the eye of the reader – and as everyone always tells you, the reader is seeing hundreds of these each day. Be spectacular. Good luck: it is the most important essay you will write in your life. Continue reading →