Residency. Already.

Fun fact about getting close to finishing med school: we're all realizing WE ARE ONLY HALF DONE with all this "temporary" suffering.  Residency is another 3+ years.

And I'm being told that residency is harder than med school!  A lot!  Really!  I still don't quite know if intern year will feel like all those years at Microsoft when we shipped 97 million products in time for the Christmas catalog.  Back when I could call almost anybody at 3 am and they were still at their desk.  Working.  At computers.  Arguing with other smartypantses about details that don't matter in the long term.  Like interns.

So: residency applications.  I'm going after obstetrics and gynecology.  This is not realistic.  I'm 49, my board scores are not impressive, I have no peer-reviewed publications, it's a surgical specialty, and it's tons more competitive now that scary malpractice and oppressive overnight deliveries have gone by the wayside in favor of conglomerate-managed group practices.  But I applied anyway.  The east coast is very crowded with community ob/gyn programs, and these are where I might have a chance.  I applied to 66 of 'em.

And I'm also going after family medicine.  In addition to everything else, FM docs deliver babies and do contraception and sterilization.  I'll be perfectly happy in family med.  I can most likely come back to the west coast to do residency in FM.  I'll also be more likely to get to do systems/process stuff if I stick with family med.  Such as figure out how to do a decent local managed primary care model on Medicaid's dime like IORA and Chen/JenMed did with Medicare.  Don't get me started.  I applied to 32 family med programs.

Here's my status map.