I had the opportunity to actively participate in the residency interview process for my program this year, interviewing about 25 applicants in all. In addition, I also got to sit in on the "rank list" meeting in which my program determined how it was going to rank each interview candidate after all the interviews were completed. It was quite an interesting experience, given that just four years ago, I was on the opposite end of the very same interview process, anxiously hoping that I'd be able to impress the people that were interviewing me. With the residency match officially done, I thought I'd share a few eye-opening tidbits that I learned from this experience.

-There is a component of luck involved in the interview process. What I mean by this is that if you happen to interview with people who are "easier" interviewers (i.e. people more likely to give every candidate they meet a high grade), your chances of being ranked highly on that program's list goes up. On the other hand, if you happen to bomb just one of your interviews with an interviewer (even if everyone else you interviewed with thought highly of you), your stock can plummet significantly. And on that note...

-Believe it or not, there are a handful of interview candidates out there who feel that it is entirely appropriate to show blatant disrespect for the residents at the program they are interviewing at. Shockingly, these people tend not to be ranked very highly [/insert sarcasm font]. Doesn't really matter how intelligent you are if you aren't smart enough to figure out that you need to play nice during this process. Speaking of which...

-By and large, your numbers don't matter too much. Sure, your board scores and clerkship rotation grades might make a difference between whether you get an interview invitation or not, but once you get your proverbial foot in the door, no one really makes that big of a deal over your scores. During the rank list meeting, not once did someone say, "Hey, this person's board scores were awesome; he/she should definitely be ranked highly!" Now with that said, it is a bit of a red flag if you have trouble passing your boards (especially Step 2 CS if you're a U.S. medical graduate) or a particular rotation (especially if it's in the area that you are applying to). Which brings me to my next point...

-As an applicant, it's probably within your best interests to bring up any potential red flags in your file - any courses that you had to remediate, any negative comments on your Dean's letter, any part of your board exams that you failed, any felony/misdemeanor convictions in your record (yes, all this information is actually in the file that we get). Just because no one brings it up at the interview doesn't mean that it won't come up during the rank list meeting, so rather than have a bunch of people who don't know the whole story speculate on what happened, you're likely much better off being up-front about your red flags and explaining any extenuating circumstances. All of which is to say...

-The interview process is an opportunity for you, the interview candidate, to express to the program who you are, as well as for you to glean some information from the program about what they are all about. So make the most of it!

Happy new year! If 2012 is when the world is supposed to end (according to the Mayan calendar), well then...let's make the most of it!

They say that getting old sucks, but it's better than the alternative. Here's to the last year of my 20s.

A Modest Proposal

As far as proposal's go, this one wasn't anywhere near as elaborate as say, p3ng's world-famous Bejeweled proposal. But since I'm lazy and don't want to have to repeat the same story every time someone asks me how I did it, please indulge me for a bit as I recount my proposal to the gal pal.

The gal pal and I have been dating for almost two years now (perhaps someday, I'll publish the story of how we met). Our relationship has obviously become quite serious, and we've talked in the past about marriage. It was only a matter of time before I decided to take the plunge. First, I bought a ring; then I had to ask her parents for her hand in marriage, which I did on a recent trip to California. The next challenge would be how I would pop the question. Over the past few weeks, I'd come up with various plans, none of which I was able to execute. An idea to propose at an ice cream farm was thwarted by rain. An idea to propose over a game of Settlers of Catan (the idea being that I would somehow hoard all the ore, and when she asked me for some ore, I'd offer to give her a "rock") fell through because well...we just haven't played the game in a while. For a fleeting moment, I had even considered proposing to her while we were on an airplane, but thought better of it because: a) she's a very private person and probably wouldn't have appreciate having such an intimate moment shared with 200 other strangers on the plane; and b) we happened to be seated next to an extraordinarily obnoxious drunk who kept making passes at her, thereby killing any semblance of a romantic mood. You get the idea. I was starting to wonder if the right circumstances were ever going to come together for me to propose. 

Then this past Saturday, I was on-call (my last 24-hour Saturday call ever in residency, hallelujah!). It was a fairly busy call during the day, but during the evening, things quieted down considerably, and I was even able to catch several hours of sleep. It was while I briefly woke up from my slumber in the middle of the night that an idea came to me. The following morning, as I was post-call and dismissed from the hospital, I began to put my plan into motion. First, I drove to Trader Joe's to buy her some flowers. It should be noted that up until this point, I had never bought her any roses before (though I had bought her sunflowers, her favorite flower, on several occasions). I picked up a bouquet of roses and a bunch of sunflowers, then drove home for the next phase of my plan. My apartment has an empty room, as my roommate abruptly moved out several months ago. Entering the empty room, I laid down a blanket in the center of the room, then placed a stuffed crocodile and stuffed zebra in the middle of the blanket.

A little bit of background story about that: as an inside joke between the two of us, our relationship is often seen as analogous to the relationship between the crocodile and the zebra from the comic strip Pearls Before Swine (I'm the crocodile, while she's the zebra - the implication being that I'm always pursuing her). For Christmas this past year, my sister gave me a set of Pearls Before Swine plush animals (which included the aforementioned stuffed croc and stuffed zebra). I positioned the crocodile so that he was facing the zebra while "kneeling" on one knee and laid a toy ring on his snout. Above the stuffed animals, I had some tiles from the game Bananagrams spell out "I love you" and below the animals, the tiles spelled out "Will you marry me?" I then laid the roses below the tiles. From there, it was just a waiting game for her to step into the room.

Initially, I had intended to pop the question that very day (Sunday), but for various reasons (unexpected lunch plans with people after church, the gal pal feeling ill later in the evening, etc.) these plans didn't come to fruition. Luckily, we both had the day off for Memorial Day, so we were able to spend some more time together today. The day seemed like a typical day, as we went to go watch Kung Fu Panda 2 and ran some errands. I was nonchalantly playing it cool all throughout the day. As we returned back to my place for dinner, it dawned on me on how I could get her to go into the empty room. 

The gal pal had been using the empty room as a storage space for some of her stuff while she was moving to a different apartment. Most of her stuff had been moved by now, but a few suitcases still remained. After dinner, I mentioned the suitcases and asked her when she planned on moving them out. As she walked over to the room to check out the suitcases, my heart started racing. This was it!

I followed her into the room, and while she was distracted by centerpiece in the room, I quickly retrieved the engagement ring that I had hidden nearby. As she turned to look at me quizzically, I got down on one knee and stammered out, "I love you; will you marry me?." (Incidentally, while I was saying this, I was fumbling to open the ring box, and wouldn't you know it, I broke the box! Typical me...)  The gal pal had a look of incredulity on her face. "Are you serious? Are you serious?!?!" she repeated over and over again. Meanwhile, I was still on one knee, waiting for her to say "Yes". And of course, after she got over her initial surprise, she did eventually say "Yes." 

And that, my friends, is the story of my modest proposal.

USS Enterprise
Stardate -311589.5231798579
Captain's Log

We have entered a new solar system to explore. What strange worlds will we encounter? What new experiences might be find? 

Mr. Data, set coordinates on my mark. Warp six. And...engage(d)!