When I left you we had just sent in applications for residency and were waiting for responses.
The first few days were the hardest of waiting, because until the interview requests start coming in, it’s easy to think that none will come. Buuuut low and behold (and not surprising at all, because my husband is brilliant and has worked his tail off), Mark received lots of interview offers. I think the final tally was 15, of which he accepted and attended 12.
Fun fact about interview offers- the most lead time you’ll get is a couple of weeks. That means you need to be prepared to make travel arrangements on a dime, and because of that, they’ll cost you a lot more than a dime. Thankfully, we have a very generous family, who helped foot the bill for travel costs as an early Christmas present for our family, because it can get expensive.
Having a family made us calculate interview offers a bit differently than I imagine others did, and I think that’s worth sharing in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation. For the first few interviews, he drove about 9 or 10 hours to the program. Because most programs have a pre-interview dinner, that meant he was up early the morning before and out the door. Then if an interview ended at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, it meant he was coming home in the wee hours of the morning, often having only a few hours of sleep before needing to hit the road again.
After a couple rounds of that, we were all exhausted, and I was very worried about Mark falling asleep at the wheel coming home from an interview. That was when we sat down and decided that flying was the better choice for our family if the drive was going to be more than 4 or 5 hours. It decreased everyone’s stress levels tremendously, and I wish we had done it earlier in the interview season.
The kids and I were able to tag along to one of Mark’s interviews, which definitely made me feel more connected to the process. If it had been feasible for us, I would have liked to be at more of them. I think I would have been more open to different cities had I been able to see them.
The other big thing we did was make sure to have a debrief after each interview. I had Mark tell me about the culture at the program, what sub-specialties their residents end up in, what he thought of the attendings he met, and made sure to get at least one specific item that stuck out in his mind about the program. Then he would add it to the unofficial rank list we kept. Later on, when the programs started to bleed together, it was helpful to be able to remind him of things he liked or didn’t like about the programs.
Once he had gone on all of his interviews, we made our rank list. The way the Match works is that all of the candidates rank the programs that they interviewed at 1-whatever-number-you-had, so for Mark, he ranked his 1-12. The program you most want to end up at is number 1, and the program you least want to end up at is at the bottom. Each program simultaneously ranks all of the applicants they interviewed in the same way. Then all of the data goes into a computer, and candidates and programs are then “matched” with each other based on their lists. Kind of like online dating, but with much higher stakes.
Every candidate gets one spot. And every program is given one candidate for each spot in their program. There are no choices, you take what you get. You also have no idea if you matched at all, because some people don’t, especially in competitive specialties. Last year 15% of medical students hoping to match in urology didn’t get matched with a program at all. That means that they either, do what’s called a “scramble” and hope that they snag a spot at a program that didn’t get all of their spaces filled or take a research year and try again. You cannot practice medicine without a residency, so you need to match in order to move forward with your (very expensive, debt-accruing) degree.
Needless to say, we prayed a lot through this process. I did my best to keep my prayers along the lines of “Lord, help me to want what You want for our family” or “Lord, let him match at the best place for him” but will admit to also sneaking in a “but it would be really great if we didn’t match in rural Pennsylvania please.” (No offense meant to those readers who happen to be living in rural PA, it’s lovely, but just not right for us)
Match Day for urology happened about a month after the match lists were due in. It made for some anxious counting down, but then he got the email, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. First of all, praise God he matched! And second, he matched at one of his top choices, so we get to stay put, which was our best case scenario. The Lord is good to us!