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Today is Match Day.
Seven years ago today I was sitting in the big open central hallway of my medical school, next to my spouse, forgetting repeatedly to breathe.
At my school, they call you up one at a time and tear open the envelope and tell you where you're going to spend the next years of your life in front of the entire school. Until Match Day, your fourth year of medical school ends in a great gaping chasm; you don't know where you're going to live, who you're going to spend your time with, who's going to teach you.
You make plans, of course: everyone told me that in Family Medicine you get your first choice. You only rank the places you want to go. You know that if you didn't get called by the office in the days leading up to Match Day that at least you'll be going somewhere.
We'd gone house hunting in the city where my first choice was, and I had my eye on a pretty yellow dollhouse with crown molding and an airy feel. I knew the residents there, and the city, and it had the opportunities my spouse needed as well, to further his career.
But there's a giant computer somewhere that makes these decisions: it takes in rank lists from medical students and rank lists from residency programs, and it shakes them all up and it spits out the future.
And they called my name, and they read my program match, and I forgot to breathe. It was my second choice. Nobody gets their second choice in Family Medicine. Nobody but me. And in that moment, everything changed. We were going to a different part of the state, to a place where I didn't know what kind of house I was going to like, to a program that had been, dizzyingly, one of the first I'd interviewed at. For a moment I thought I'd heard it wrong. But I walked up and I took my envelope and I read it again and I sat down and I looked at my spouse and he smiled.
"It's got a great school for me to study at. And they have a rural track."
I don't know what would have happened at my first choice program. No one is ever told what would have happened, to cite C.S. Lewis, but I know what did happen. What did happen is that I was pushed, and pushed harder. I was given opportunities and training and encouragement, and I was left just enough on my own.
I have not looked back with regret on the decision the computer made for me, not even once, since the first day I started at the residency it chose. And I know that it made me what I am today, and I'm glad.
Seven years ago today I was sitting in the big open central hallway of my medical school, next to my spouse, forgetting repeatedly to breathe.
At my school, they call you up one at a time and tear open the envelope and tell you where you're going to spend the next years of your life in front of the entire school. Until Match Day, your fourth year of medical school ends in a great gaping chasm; you don't know where you're going to live, who you're going to spend your time with, who's going to teach you.
You make plans, of course: everyone told me that in Family Medicine you get your first choice. You only rank the places you want to go. You know that if you didn't get called by the office in the days leading up to Match Day that at least you'll be going somewhere.
We'd gone house hunting in the city where my first choice was, and I had my eye on a pretty yellow dollhouse with crown molding and an airy feel. I knew the residents there, and the city, and it had the opportunities my spouse needed as well, to further his career.
But there's a giant computer somewhere that makes these decisions: it takes in rank lists from medical students and rank lists from residency programs, and it shakes them all up and it spits out the future.
And they called my name, and they read my program match, and I forgot to breathe. It was my second choice. Nobody gets their second choice in Family Medicine. Nobody but me. And in that moment, everything changed. We were going to a different part of the state, to a place where I didn't know what kind of house I was going to like, to a program that had been, dizzyingly, one of the first I'd interviewed at. For a moment I thought I'd heard it wrong. But I walked up and I took my envelope and I read it again and I sat down and I looked at my spouse and he smiled.
"It's got a great school for me to study at. And they have a rural track."
I don't know what would have happened at my first choice program. No one is ever told what would have happened, to cite C.S. Lewis, but I know what did happen. What did happen is that I was pushed, and pushed harder. I was given opportunities and training and encouragement, and I was left just enough on my own.
I have not looked back with regret on the decision the computer made for me, not even once, since the first day I started at the residency it chose. And I know that it made me what I am today, and I'm glad.
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