Sunday, December 31, 2006

Interview Trail Stop #7: Chicago, Illinois


Chicago Skyline
Originally uploaded by ironchefmike.
My second visit to the Windy City, unfortunately a little less fun than the last - nothing bad, but just a bunch of mildly annoying things that added up to an unpleasant experience. To wit:
  • crazy cab drivers driving me between the hotel and the airport, a journey making the chase scene from The French Connection look like child's play
  • ambulance sirens keeping me from a restful sleep
  • my return flight to Boston being delayed over and over again, eventually being cancelled - I wasn't prepared to spend 10 hours in the airport. 'Plan A' was to read my Neurology textbook. That kept me busy for the first 5 hours. I eventually came up with 'Plan B', which was essentially doing a bar tour down each concourse of the airport, then sitting down and writing Thank You notes to the program directors of the programs that I've interviewed at. Really - such an AWESOME plan.
  • an extra night in a hotel - dang these Chicago hotels are expensive!
  • the airline overbooking every single return flight the next day
  • having to find an alternative way to get home on one of the heaviest travel days of the year, combined with my total suckitude in doing so - if this were an episode of The Amazing Race, I'd be so eliminated
Somewhere amongst those things I had another interview.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Interview Trail Stop #6: Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester (pronounced WOO-stah. WOO-STAH!!!!!) is the third-largest city in Massachusetts - I'm not sure who the second-largest is, but I'm assuming it is Springfield that has taken over that spot. Worcester has an interesting history:
  • the first liquid fuel rocket launching, by Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry.
  • the first radio station to play a Beatles song in the United States
  • the first ballpoint pen and first typewriter were invented in Worcester, Massachusetts
And several other firsts that I really don't care to repeat here. Lake Quinsigamond, pictured above, is a stone's throw away from the hospital. Perhaps it's because I have to wake up at such an early hour to make the drive out to Worcester, but I think I'm starting to hit interview burnout - seven interviews in 16 days is a relatively decent pace, I think.

Thoughts about this program here.

Interview Trail Stop #5: Boston, Massachusetts

Boston. Home of the U.S.S. Constitution, the Red Sox, the Freedom Trail, sh*tty drivers, and one of the most distinctive accents in the U.S. of A. No picture from this trailstop, not because I couldn't find a nice scenic view, but because I couldn't find pahking for my cah.

At last, midway through the interview process, I get to sleep in my own bed. I'm fairly sluggish in preparing for this interview. I think it's because I'm home. As comfortable as the hotel rooms have been, there were no distractions to keep me from getting to the out-of-town interviews on time. I barely make it to this interview on time.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Millennium Park: Crown Fountain


Millennium_Park_Man
Originally uploaded by ironchefmike.
This piece, called The Crown Fountain, is located near Millennium Park's Cloud Gate. In warmer months, water will spew forth from the lips of the people on the screen. Apparently the faces of about 1,000 different Chicagoans will appear on these large screens (there was another screen behind me as I took this photo). I didn't have time to stand there and count.

Interview Trail Stop #4b: Chicago, Illinois


Underneath the Chicago L
Originally uploaded by ironchefmike.
Like many large cities, Chicago is one of those that has many things to do. And if you live there, you haven't done too many of them - perhaps you're just too busy with your working life or you just want to avoid as many tourists as possible. Most likely you've just been there too long and have started taking them for granted. I've been in Boston for ten years now and have yet to go on a Duck Tour. I've never seen the reenactment of the Boston Tea Party. I walked about one-eighth the distance along the Freedom Trail before I got distracted by I-can't-remember-what. Anyway, I imagine that whichever city I end up living in, I'll need to do most of those cool touristy things early on before it all becomes really uncool. Like 'The Untouchables Tour.' This looks so touristy it makes me want to vomit, but there's no way I'm not going on that tour sometime in my life. The picture to the left is the underbelly of the Chicago train system, aka the 'L' because it's 'eLevated', get it?

Impressions of my second Chicago residency program here.

Interview Trail Stop #4a: Chicago, Illinois

My visit to Chicago was very pleasant. When I walked out of my first interview, it was raining quite hard, and I thought I would be confined to my hotel room. Luckily the weather cleared, and it turned out to be a beautiful day in Chicago. I had time to wander a little around the Millennium Park area. To the right you can see the Cloud Gate, a mirror statue placed on the edge of the park. Personally, I think it more resembles a prostate gland, and you can see a group of would-be urologists underneath the statue checking for giant nodules.

I also walked by Lake Michigan, however I was driven off by a gaggle of Canadian geese, who were apparently having a 'Who can take the biggest crap on the sidewalk' contest.

I tried to get a photo of the Chicago skyline, but failed because of shaky hands and fading camera batteries. I can't prove it, but Chicago has a fairly nice skyline, second only to Philadelphia's on my interview trail so far (I'm excluding Pittsburgh's skyline from this 'contest' to avoid questions of favoritism). I loved walking around downtown - Chicago has all the culture of a big city, but without the Type A tension of Boston or New York.

I'm desperately trying not to fall in love with a particular city or residency program so to avoid too much disappointment when Match time comes around. So, the only levels of criteria that exist on my evaluation scale now are:
  1. I could live there.
  2. I could live there only if someone were to hold a gun to my head.
Chicago is in the first category.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Intra-Trail: Boarded Again

The testing center for the clinical skills exam is near O'Hare airport. So, naturally, I fly into Midway. My friend Jen is a trooper, waiting for my flight to land in inclement weather, and lugs my butt all the way around the city to my hotel in Rosemont, Illinois.

Step 2 of the USMLE exams includes an eight-hour long session with a dozen standardized patients. In the end I'm not sure if this test really proves anything to anybody. I think it's wasted money - the only people benefitting are the people who administer the exam, and the word on the street is that they're still losing money on that despite the exorbitant cost to the students. The actors are troopers, though, exposing themselves to a myriad of medical students with cold hands or long fingernails trying to palpate the size of their livers. We're forbidden to perform breast exams, rectal exams, or pelvic exams - they are saved from that torture - for now.

I felt kinda ashamed of my off-white coat - it's still spotted with a myriad of unbleachable stains. Then, I saw the 'white' coat the kid next to me put on. Yeah - apparently he washed his white coat with like 5000 stray red socks. The patient encounters are pretty simple - 15 minutes to take a history, perform a physical, and provide closure for the visit, then 10 minutes to write your note. It's a bit of a game, really. The right questions unlock the right answers. Project warmth and compassion. Fake a competent physical exam. 96% of American medical students who take this exam pass it the first time around. That just proves to me that American medical schools are doing their jobs, and that this exam is increasingly unnecessary.*

Once I finish with the exam, I'm too tired to feel relieved. All I know is that I have a novel sitting back in my hotel room, and it has absolutely nothing (I think) to do with medicine. Rather than sit alone in my room with the cable television and the overpriced wireless internet, I'm going to sit in the hotel restaurant and join this clique of lone travelers and revel in our collective solitude, with novel in hand. I pick a seat near the bar and open the novel - nobody gives a second look. Actually, I'm fairly certain nobody gives a first look. Anyway, I pay more attention to the other souls in the restaurant/bar, mostly business types:
  • There's an executive who looks like he's just extending his six-martini lunch, working on the USA Today crossword puzzle.
  • A couple of individuals at the bar have struck up a conversation that wanders from business deals to baseball to football back to business.
  • Several others at the bar have chosen to sit near each other, but have declined to talk, only staring blankly at the same television.
  • A man sits at a table across the room barking orders into his cell phone, while eating dinner with - and I'm not sure - it's either his girlfriend or his 14-year old daughter.
  • And some thirty-something year old medical student who's trying to start a novel but just keeps on staring at the other people in the bar.

* Rumor has it that this is the final year of existence of this part of the USMLE Step 2. I'll believe it when I see it.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Inter-Trail: Hills



The rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania, December 9, 2006.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Interview Trail Stop #3: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania



On the approach to Pittsburgh National Airport, I can see that the highway into the city is backed up for miles - an unlucky combination of bad weather, bad driving conditions, and a Thursday night Steeler game. I had to wait two hours in the airport for my ride, but at least the Steelers won. I wanted a picture of the Pittsburgh skyline, and hopefully of Heinz field with all the fans sitting inside, but trying to take that picture in a moving vehicle didn't make for a pretty image.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Interview Trail Stop #2: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania



I fly into Philadelphia right after the Rochester interview. Philadelphia at night is beautiful - I get a view of Lincoln Financial Field as the Eagles host the Carolina Panthers for Monday Night Football (alas, no picture as the airplane window is too smudged and scuffed for me to even attempt to get a nice photo of the view). I'm stunned by how beautiful the Philadelphia Skyline is.

Trail Stop 1: Rochester



First interview at a program in Rochester, New York - one of the best-kept secrets of the Eastern U.S. Home of Kodak, the Eastman School of Music, and very close to the gorgeous Finger Lakes.

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