It only takes one

Oh, sweet Nova.



Best part: "...our faculty members are insightful exemplars of medical practice..." (Dr. Silvagni has a handlebar moustache. My kinda dean.)

OK, so I get to be a doctor, I get to move to Florida, and with some luck, I'll get to do rotations in a Spanish-speaking Level 1 trauma hospital in Miami. It's all good.

And then, depression set in.

For an extra five points, name the movie. (character says, "and then, depression set in.")

I'll give you some hints. It's the only movie more quotable by immature 25-65 year olds than Caddyshack or M.P. & the Holy Grail. It's actually three movies in one. It has John Candy in it. It has a motorhome in it. It has passable rifle work in it (that's a drum corps reference). There's at least one spatula in it. It briefly distracted me from the slow death of high school.

I bring this up because yesterday I got the previously-referenced Dear John letter from Bradenton, confirming that I'm a used up old poser with no employable skills, and within half an hour I found my first bonafide white hair. On my head.

Friday I looked like this:


Saturday:


Now it's just all saggy breasts, menopause, and embroidered kleenex box covers from here out.

Too bad my eyes are still good because I could really use some snarky Prada eyewear to complete the look.

Oooh, but now I have an excuse to move to Florida anyway! I'm old!

Bradenton says wait

Got a letter from Bradenton today, but not the letter. I'm on the alternate list.

Ugh.

Life as a gerbil

Med school update: NOTHING TO REPORT. Further bulletins every 30 seconds for the foreseeable future.

Surely, SURELY this is a sign from GOD.

Everybody but me is already going to prom!

I met a coupla sweet kids from Chicago while I was in Florida. We all interviewed at Bradenton. (Yes, MY Bradenton.)

Both of these punk-asses got accepted at Bradenton. And they know it already. And I know nothing. I'm all gown and no tiara here.

The people at Bradenton made their decisions yesterday. This I know because the forums on studentdoctor.net start buzzing every time the universe shifts in any perceptible fashion. We know how much cream cheese the Third Vice Dean of Admissions puts on his bagel on Tuesdays and how much gets on his tie. For any of the 150+ med schools in the US, we know whether the news comes by email, phone call or certified postal mail. We know when to expect the news after an interview, give or take 45 minutes. We know how many waitlist spots turned into acceptances, broken down by state, marital status and eye color, since 1972.

Bradenton sends acceptances by certified postal mail on Fridays. Floridians and midwesterners know by Saturday. The Pony Express might make it to Seattle by, say, the day before classes start in July.

I hate this. I could make up a story and call Bradenton and say I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon to go backpacking in Vietnam. Or I'm starting a month-long silent yoga retreat with no access to civilization. Or my great-grandmother, whose one wish in life was to see me accepted to medical school, is on her deathbed.

But I won't. That would be immature. Plus it would jinx it.

But it looks good on paper!

Today's interview in Mesa AZ, at a school with a very innovative curriculum and community clinic focus, was, unfortunately, no fun at all. Think fresh PhDs, all full of religion from longitudinal studies in med ed literature, preaching the faith. Oh so very tiresome. OK it was a little bit fun - the other interviewees were great (one was older than me, yee HAW!), the DO who interviewed me was cool, and playing rude Q&A with the dean (who looks EXACTLY like Mr. Burns on the Simpsons) at the end was fun. Is it bad that a future physician takes pleasure in causing figures of authority to squirm? I hope not.

Dinner with my cousin was fun. Turkish food and belly dancing.

I'd say more but I have to get on a plane, once again, in a few hours. Oy.

update from Miami

Today's interview in Bradenton went very well. They had me at hello. I thought I wasn't going to like the Bradenton area, but it feels a lot like San Luis Obispo, which is a very good thing. I really like their curriculum and how serious and professional the whole day went. I got to see a demonstration of manipulation, which is the whole point of DO vs. MD, and I was quite a bit more impressed and interested than I thought I'd be. Clifford would love it there - everybody has a dog, and it's all trails. Lots of lakes too, but there are gators, plus he doesn't like to get his hairdo wet anyway. This school is graduating its first class come June, and coming off the highest board scores in the nation, so everybody's all a-twitter about what the match list (of residency placements) is going to look like. On my way out of town I stopped for coffee and got out my laptop, which has an Obama '08 sticker on it, and that felt VERY out of place. Remember 2000? 537 votes? Hanging chads? I don't think they're over it.

OK, so to review, I left last Wednesday night for Ft. Lauderdale, which is not that great, and interviewed at Nova, which is a solid school but the presentation is lacking, and then I went to Key West for a few days, and that was relaxing, particularly the women's meeting I went to, and then yesterday I drove north all day to Bradenton. Interviewed all day, then I just got in to Miami, and found some really great Cuban food. Yum.

Tomorrow morning, WAY too early, I'll get on a plane to come home for up to 6 hours before I leave for Phoenix tomorrow night, and another interview on Friday. I'll have dinner with my cousin Bob, then I'm back Saturday. Thankfully Monday's a school holiday. I have my Yakima interview the following Friday the 25th, so I'm missing a lot of school. Nova is supposed to give me a yay/nay by Wednesday the 23rd, and LECOM-B (B for Bradenton) will yay/nay by next Friday. My other Arizona interview is Feb 26, and it would be so great if I had no reason to go.

Oh, and UW sent another email and said I'm not rejected yet, still. Apparently they kicked some people out of the competitive pool, but I get to keep swimming.

More later. I'm really really pooped.

DO love, so much love, but tough love

I currently have 5 interviews at schools of Osteopathic Medicine. Two in Florida, two in Arizona, and one in Washington. The immediate and enthusiastic reception I've received from DO schools is a huge difference from the pile of polite rejections I'm accumulating from MD schools. I'm hoping for a few more DO interview invites, but in reality I expect nothing, nada, from MD schools.

I'm currently sitting in an internet cafe on Key West, which is a lovely warm and friendly place to blow a few days between med school interviews. The thought that I have to put my wool blend interview suit and hose back on in a couple days, for my Bradenton interview, is surreal.

On Friday (Jan 11) I interviewed at Nova. I loved the med students who toured us around. I had a great time with my fellow interviewees. The facilities are brand new, there are a number of renowned faculty, and the dean who closed the day left me more motivated to excel than I've felt in a while.

OK, but the downside is that the building looks like a Vegas casino, the location (see previous post) leaves a bit to be desired, and the overall feeling is roughly equivalent to a Barbizon Academy of Beauty. My half hour interview didn't seem to require me to be present - I was interrupted during my answers and the very, very, very old lead interviewer kept looking at his watch and ruffling through the files of other interviewees. The "bad cop" interviewer challenged me on my justification for changing careers and on my transcript indiscretions (great to finally be challenged on this - I'd dig in hard on these issues if I was the interviewer) but I got the impression that she made up her own answers to these questions based on what she expected the answers to be.

These folks are between me and an acceptance, but I don't believe that they otherwise have too much involvement in a Nova medical education. They're administrators. They have thousands of applicants to review. Their opinions were cast in stone in the mid 1950's. But I came out of there feeling like a poser, like I'm kidding myself trying to go to med school, that I'd been judged and found wanting. By contrast, I came out of my UW interview feeling very pumped up, very excited, and feeling completely blessed and fortunate and happy.

Driving out of Ft. Lauderdale yesterday, I saw a billboard advertising Nova for allied health professional programs (nursing & respiratory therapy etc.). I think I'd go to Nova if I get accepted, but the impression they left me with was this:

How does Ft. Lauderdale persist?

I don't get it. Is this retail-employment-sustained-retail? Ft. Lauderdale (and much of southeast Florida) is a vast expanse of streets lined with malls, mini-malls, super-malls, Home Depots every 1.24 miles, unlimited apartment/townhouse/condo acreage, and a stoplight-controlled intersection at every shopping opportunity. I didn't see any for lease signs, nor did I see any stores that were actually interesting. The people selling products over these retail counters are consistently bored and inattentive. The streets are all at least 3 lanes in each direction, and the traffic is constantly heavy. Clearly this is a populous area.

Ft. Lauderdale is classified as urban/metropolitan, but what I see is suburban sprawl, the likes of which I've never seen before. Driving 1.2 miles from my hotel (attached to a super-mall) to Nova (surrounded by malls and apartment complexes) took 25 minutes. Any requirement to drive anywhere implies the equivalent of crossing the 520 at rush hour.

Here's what I don't get: how does this economy support itself? I wasn't in a tourist area. I didn't see major employers like Boeing anywhere near the sprawl. It appears that people move here, get retail counter jobs, and shop at other retail establishments. Cash inflow appears to come from students at Nova or Broward Community College, or maybe from retirees who can't afford to live closer to the beach.

The Nova lifestyle appears to consist of dressing in scrubs, living across the street from campus, and venturing out of that capsule only when absolutely necessary.















On the map, it looks like civilization ends just east of Ft. Lauderdale, so I drove out there to see for myself. Indeed, there's nothing but swampland. I must conclude that Ft. Lauderdale is a random event, arbitrarily located, sustained by constant influx of people tired of being cold and soggy all winter.

Coincidentally, I crashed an environmental health class at UW last week, where The Story of Stuff was being shown. Highly recommended viewing: The Story of Stuff