Life in Triage

My thought a couple months ago was to sit in my hotel room the night after each interview and record my thoughts on the program, as a way of helping me keep track of how I felt about it at the time. Well, it turns out I’m lazy and just plain old didn’t do it. In retrospect, however, it was probably for the best, as my opinions of each program I’ve been too has been so constantly molded and shaped by the subsequent interviews.

So, here I sit, 9 interviews down, and absolutely no idea what I want or need to do. I have my favorites right now (Portland, Denver, UTSW, and Cornell), but even that list is constantly changing. Its coming to a time where I have to decide what I really want out of life. There are two paths laid before me right now, and I don’t really know how to choose between. I have two primary goals on what I want out of residency: 1) to become a technically proficient and clinically competent surgeon, and 2) to land a fellowship which will allow me to do whatever I want with the rest of my life career-wise.

Now, these two goals don’t necessarily need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, I think any one of my top 4 programs right now will allow me to do both of those things, but there are definitely skews. For example, I will probably do a larger number of more varied cases at a place like Louisville or UTSW, and probably be a better surgeon at the end as a result of it. On the other hand, the fellowships that the residents land coming out of Cornell are among the best in the nation. Not to say that there aren’t great fellowships going to the other schools, there just seem to be more of them going to a place like Cornell.

And then, there are the intangibles, the most prominent of which are the personalities of the residents and the city itself. In the former category, UTSW and Cornell probably win, but it could just be happenstance that I connected with some of the guys there. In the latter, Portland and Denver stomp all over the other cities.

I’m tired. I’m tired of traveling, tired of the interview process, tired of not knowing where I’m going to spend the next 7 years of my life. It really is incredible the humiliation that we subject ourselves to on the path to becoming a doctor. I’m hemorrhaging money that I’m borrowing from someone else, paying someone for the “opportunity” to do some resident’s bitch work and paying to fly my happy ass around the country and paying for my hotel rooms only to show up at 6:45 in some time zone and try to sell myself. Screw this. Ok rant over. Its 3am, I have no idea why I’m awake, and I’m mad at everything

In a zen moment, I’m going to leave this post with a picture of why Portland is awesome

30 minutes away from the hospital...