Match Day 2018

We may not be getting out much this winter, but I'm loving the chance to post about some of the bigger things that happened in the last year or so that I didn't get around to blogging at the time. Today I want to blog about Match Day--the most important day in a medical student's life. Perhaps the most important day in a doctor's entire career. It determines whether they'll be able to practice medicine, and what type of doctor they'll be (cardiologist, pediatrician, surgeon, dermatologist, etc.). This is a long post, but I wanted to record all the details from this monumental day.

Match Day 2018 was on March 16--just 3 weeks after Jack was born. But first, a bit of background on what exactly Match Day is. After medical school, every medical student will need to complete 3 or more additional training years in his or her chosen medical specialty in order to practice as a doctor in the United States. You learn a little bit about a lot of medical stuff during medical school, but residency is the time to learn a lot of stuff about just one specific specialty that you will be practicing in for the rest of your career. You may technically be a doctor when you graduate from medical school, but you're not really a doctor until you finish your residency. After 3 years of medical school, Jared knew he either wanted to practice as a family medicine doctor or as a radiologist. Radiologists make more money and can often work from home, which sounded appealing, but after Jared did a radiology rotation in New Jersey and realized that radiologists don't get to interact much with patients, he was committed to pursuing family medicine. It really does suit him.

Students spend their last year of medical school applying to residencies and then hopefully interviewing at residency programs across the country so they can "match" at the end of med school into a training program. Many students don't match, which is terrifying because at that point you probably have a couple hundred-thousand dollars in student loan debt (yup) and no way of paying it off. Leading up to match day, you rank the programs you have interviewed at in order of your preference. Then each program ranks each of the hundred or so students they have interviewed in order of their preference. Then everyone's preferences go into a computer program that uses a complex algorithm to pair students with schools in order to give the most people possible their top preference.

 ^^Jared feeding baby Jack on match day and trying not to throw up from nerves.

On Match Week, everyone who has entered the match will receive an email on Monday telling them whether or not they matched. If you don't match, then you have to "scramble" to hopefully grab a residency from a program that for whatever reason didn't fill all their residency spots in the match. I think this process mostly involves reaching out to random programs and hopefully getting a couple phone interviews. But if you did match, then a huge burden is lifted and you wait until Friday to find out where you matched.

When Jared got the Monday email telling him he matched, we felt a huge sense of relief. But there was still a lot of anxiety about not knowing where we'd be headed next. This is how we had ranked the programs Jared interviewed at:

1. Richland, WA (family medicine)
2. Las Vegas, NV (family medicine)
3. Bremerton, WA (family medicine)
4. Billings, MT (family med)
5. Casper, WY (family med)
6. Atlanta, GA (family med)
7. Stamford, CT (family med) (holla at The Office fans)
8. Coney Island, NY (internal medicine) (booooo)

We were ultimately grateful just to know we had matched and would have some job security, but we really wanted that Richland residency, and we really really really reallllllly didn't want the Connecticut or New York residencies. After living so far away for 4 years, we wanted to get back a little closer to family, and somewhere where Jared's coworkers would be kind (New England doctors can be pretty unfeeling) and the cost of living would be cheap so we could get into a home.

 ^^Jared and bb Jack with our two closest med student friends in Atlanta (Evan Rogler and Zach Wadsworth) with their baby boys (Leo and Ramson). There is no smile in Jared's eyes in any of these pictures from Match Day haha. Poor guy has never been more anxious in his life.

On Match Day we met up with all our Atlanta med student friends at a bar and grill in Tucker, GA to open our Match letters. By some miracle, everyone matched! Considering we all went to a Caribbean medical school (SGU), we weren't sure we'd all be so lucky. Everyone sat nervously around a big table, ordering food and drinks. I remember that Jared and I were down to our last pennies by this point in the year, so we just split an appetizer. The 4th year of medical school involves so many additional expenses not covered by your loans (residency applications, flights, thousand-dollar tests, thousand-dollar test prep programs, etc.), we were coasting through that last month of medical school on fumes. The others had been allotted a lot more loan money than us because you get 15k extra per year per kid. We didn't have Jack until the month before Jared finished his schooling. On the plus side, we won't have to pay back as much loan money as most of our friends!

^^My med-school wives tribe!

 ^^All the guys matched into the specialties they were hoping for! Jared still looks a bit like a deer in the headlights here.

When the emails came in telling everyone where they matched, we went around the table one at a time to open our emails and read them to the group. It was actually a really cool experience and I'm glad we did it this way instead of at home by ourselves. It felt like everyone was opening their mission calls together or something. As we went around the table, everyone was so happy because they all matched into their first or second program of choice. I have never seen such a relieved, giddy, joyful group of people. When it got to Jared, I was certain he would read, "Congratulations, you matched into the family medicine residency at Kadlec University in Richland, WA!" Instead he read, "You matched into the University of Wyoming family medicine residency in Casper, WY!" As everyone cheered, both of our hearts sank a little and we both had these semi-fake smiles plastered to our faces.

As the next person opened their email, I whispered to Jared, "Is this ok? Are we ok?" And Jared whispered back, half-panicked, "Yes--I think so?" Looking back, I think we were in a little bit of shock because we were so sure we'd match into one of our top 3 choices. We went home after everyone else opened their Match emails. We left in a rush partly because we had a colicky newborn who we needed to get home, but also because we needed to go process our feelings away from our friends who were all giddy to have matched into their top choices. It was a weird day. We couldn't really feel ecstatic about matching into our 5th choice. All we'd experienced of Casper was a freezing, windy few weeks there in January while I was 8 months pregnant and Jared was sick with the stomach flu. But then, we also couldn't really feel disappointed either, because if Jared hadn't matched into Casper then he would have matched into one of the programs back east, or perhaps no program at all. For that, we felt so relieved and grateful that Casper saved us and was our ticket to moving back West. As we stayed busy with our colicky baby and house hunting, our worries faded and we began to feel truly excited about our upcoming Wyoming adventure.

Now that we've been living and working in Casper for 9+ months, we are beyond grateful that Jared matched here instead of any of the other programs he interviewed at, and I'm not just saying that. Our top 3 choices were brand new programs that hadn't really established a reputation yet. Casper's family medicine program, on the other hand, has been around for decades. It is well established and well respected. It's the program that will do the most in getting us where we want to end up (at a family medicine practice somewhere in UT). We're also glad Jared didn't match into Billings. Although the scenery and outdoorsiness of Billings is really cool (cooler than Casper, probably), it is just such a far drive from both of our families that I don't think we'd see them any more than we did when we were living in Georgia. My family is just a 6-hr drive from Casper. Far enough that we wouldn't just up and visit them on any ol' weekend, but close enough to visit every couple months, and close enough for them to drive up fairly often too.

Jared also really loves everyone he works with and the way the residency program here is run. He is learning a lot, and everyone looks out for one another. It's an extremely family-friendly environment. Also, we are in love with our little home on the edge of the prairie.

 ^^We took these pictures at Stone Mountain when Jared's mom came to visit the day after Jared matched. Jared was happy by this point, but obviously exhausted. No rest for the weary when you've got a colicky newborn on your hands! Thank heavens for our angel moms who came to help us out and let us catch some z's here and there.