Travels

Just in case anyone is wondering where I am at any given time, here's my travel schedule for the next few months:

Dec. 1st-Dec. 5th: Salt Lake City
Dec. 5th-Dec. 8th: Chicago
Dec. 8th-Dec. 10th: Ann Arbor, MI
Dec. 10th-Dec. 13th: Chicago
Dec. 13th-Dec. 14th: Madison, WI
Dec. 15th: Back to Seattle

Dec. 17th-Dec. 18th: snowshoeing on Mt. Rainier

Dec. 18th-Dec. 19th: San Diego
Dec. 19th: Back to Seattle

Jan. 12th-Jan. 14th: Boston
Jan. 14th: Providence, RI
Jan. 14th-Jan. 15th: Middletown, CT
Jan. 15th-Jan. 16th: Hanover, NH
Jan. 16th: Back to Seattle

Jan. 26th-Jan. 29th: skiing in Tahoe
Jan. 29th-Jan. 31st: Tucson, AZ
Jan. 31st: Back to Seattle

Feb. 2nd-Feb. 5th: Carmel, CA for a research conference

Feb. 11th: off to Great Falls, MT for my neurology rotation

Residency Interviews

I am about to embark on 2 months of interviews at residency programs across the country, in order to determine where I will be spending the next 3+ years of my life. For those of you not familiar with the mysterious workings of medical residencies, here is how the process works:
First 3 years of medical school: go to classes, work in hospitals and clinics, and learn things
Fourth year medical school: figure out how much time you can take off and still graduate, and try not to forget everything you learned during the first 3 years. During 4th year of medical school, you apply for residency:
September--pick programs and send in your applications
November-December--get interview invitations (yay!) or rejections (boo!)
December-January--buy lots of plane tickets, spend ridiculous amounts of money on hotel rooms, figure out how you are going to keep your suit from getting wrinkled while living out of a suitcase for days at a time, and come up with compelling and interesting things to say at various interviews
February--decide where you want to go and submit a ranked list (school A is my first choice, school B is my 2nd choice, etc.). Meanwhile the programs do the same thing (student A is our first choice, student B is our 2nd choice, etc)
March 16th--MATCH DAY! A mysterious computer somewhere in the world takes your list, and the programs' lists and somehow decides where you will be going. We all gather in the school lobby, are handed an evelope, open it and ta da! You find out your new home, where you are legally bound to go for at least one year.

Where am I applying?, you might ask. First, I'm applying in internal medicine. Which is general medicine for adults. Second, I'm only applying to academic programs since I'm very interested in teaching medical students and thus, need to go to a program affiliated with a medical school. Third, I don't think I can live in the South, so I did not apply to any program further south than Boston (except on the west coast because I don't think California and Arizona count as the South).

Here is my current interview schedule (subject to change):
Dec. 1st: University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
Dec. 9th: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Dec. 14th: University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Dec. 19th: UCSD, San Diego, CA
Jan. 6th: University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Jan. 13th: Beth Israel Deaconess, Boston, MA
Jan. 16th: Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Hanover, NH
Jan. 30th: University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

My current 1st choice is UW, but only because that is what I am familiar with. And because I love Seattle. We'll see what the other programs have to offer.