Match Day

Today, I'm going to break a hard and fast rule of my blog. For so many reasons, I never post pictures of myself on my blog. Not that it's really that hard to figure out it's me, here, if you know me, but nonetheless. While on the blog, as in life, most of my "rules" tend to be closer to "guidelines", this one's pretty much written in stone. Except today. Because, it just fits.

What's so special about today, you ask? Today is Match Day.

For those of you who don't know, the short explanation is that Match Day is this torture ritual cooked up by the Axis of Evil to add even more stress and drama to the life of a blossoming young doctor. See, what happens is, way back in August of your fourth year, you start submitting applications for places you want to train to do the specialty that you want to be in when you grow up. And the programs get all these hundreds of applications, and decide who they want to interview. So then, you interview at whatever programs, and they interview however many prospectives (i.e., we interviewed 90 for our 12 slots). Then after all that, which so far is not unlike getting a real job, in February you rank all the programs at which you interviewed in the order in which you would like to attend them. Meanwhile, the programs rank all the applicants they interviewed in the order in which they would like to have them. And then somewhere in Idaho or Texas or something some big computer puts all this together with a couple of complex mathematical algorithms and a hearty serving of voodoo and then spits out who goes where for what.

And that's the simplified version. We're not even going to talk about early match, the San Francisco Match, couples matching, or any of that shit.

Then comes Match Week. Match Day is always the third Thursday in March. But before that comes Black Monday, which is when you find out IF you matched, although not WHERE you match. The programs find out on Tuesday if they've filled all their slots, and then, the students who didn't match try to find open positions at programs that didn't fill, which may or may not be in their desired specialty and usually involves a lot of phone calls and faxing. This, appropriately enough, is called Scrambling. So then on Thursday, all the medical students in the whole country find out at 1pm Eastern where they're spending their next 1-8 years.

It's nerve-wracking. And a particularly sociopathic way to make people find jobs.

So last year the Match wasn't AS big a deal for me, because I was at home waiting for the results on my laptop in my parents' kitchen. Actually, last year Black Monday was the big day, because I only ended up ranking two programs (shhh) and the much bigger piece for me was if I had to scramble into a position. Once I knew I was in somewhere, I really had two options. I was a little surprised that I was going to Carolina, but, I'd waited so long for some stability and sense in my life and the ability to move forward by that point.

This year, it's a big deal because as of today the light at the end of the tunnel is finally confirmed to not be a train. There are people, with names and identities and pictures, who are coming to take my place in July. Fresh, new, impressionable minds that we can watch be progressively beat down and jaded next year and think fondly, well, at least it's not my turn anymore. Hmm, think I'll give myself the afternoon off from clinic next Tuesday.

Nah, actually, the interns are well supported around here. Intern year is just hard, even without the chaos and pathology and malevolence that made up my OB/G experience.

Four years ago (holy shit, it really was that long ago, wasn't it?) was a HUGE deal. My whole class, and all our families and friends, got together in this bar in Forest Park. And back then, you know, it was NOON Eastern, so 11 central that we found out. And Black Monday was so, like, whatever, because I knew then I wasn't going to NOT match, because my home program was going to rank me, but oddly, when I logged on that Monday to find out, and I looked at the little message that said, "Congratulations! You have matched." I got this weird sinking feeling in my stomach. So by the time Thursday rolled around, I was a nervous wreck. The Emerald Palace had once been at the top of my rank list, but after I went back for a second look, and after I did the same elsewhere, it dwindled down to #3. And my #1 rank had been heavily recruiting me. And please, my #2 should be so lucky to have me (although, I'm not sure why I thought I would match there, because I didn't like them, and they didn't really seem to like me, but, whatever). So I'd come up with two scenarios in my head: either I got my top rank, went home, put the house on the market, and moved to Baltimore, or I got my #2, went home, messed up the house again, and stayed in Chicago.

For some very bizarre reason, I had no contingency plan for #3.

And that year they'd made a rule that the bar wouldn't open until 11, when we all had our letters, because there'd been some embarrassing behavior in the past. And wow, I was a mess. I don't actually drink much, but let me tell you, I've never in my life been SO INCREDIBLY PISSED that no one would give me a drink as I was at 10:55 that morning.

So 11am finally comes. I go up to get my sealed letter telling me that (not that I knew this yet) I was being sent to hell. And I dawdled a little on the way back. And finally the friend who's standing on my right in the picture was like, "Well???" And then he dragged me to the back of the bar where my parents and my close circle of friends were waiting. And we all opened our letters. And I read mine. And fortunately, my friend Martha captured the moment on film:


Yeah, I wasn't so pleased.

Not that I could actually tell you why. I was more stunned than anything else. I kind of wandered around in a fog for a little while while the afore-mentioned friend and my other friend's husband kept feeding me drinks. And then a little while later we wandered over to the neighborhood Borders, where I again wandered aimlessly until I found myself in the Travel section. And then I thought, huh. I probably ought to get some books on New Hampshire.

So I loaded myself down with just about every book I could find, and then went back to the Cafe, where I encountered my friend Phil's wife, who had expected that they would match in Detroit but ended up matching in Cleveland, poring over an equally tall stack of books about the state of Ohio.

Last I heard, his mismatch turned out better than mine.

Whatever, I'm here now, and better days are in sight. Sometime I'll tell you about the night before Match Day 2004, which is a whole other story in and of itself (and involves a tattoo parlor). But pardon me while I escape to go drinking with my co-interns. We have a lot to celebrate...some of us even more than others.