15 January 2006

the weeks are longer but the days are shorter

honestly, not much more to see at flickr..

trying to recap the past week...

monday: can't remember. must not have been very exciting. i'm sure matt and i watched the office DVDs again.

tuesday: interviewed for preliminary medicine at SUNY downstate. a lot of foreign and carribbean grads, which makes conversation a bit uneasy and awkward if you arrive too early. i arrived too early. plus side: one of the students i rotated with at sinai was there, so we had fun catching up with each other while everyone else asked the residents questions about the program. i just kind of lost interest midway through the morning. the interview itself was pretty lame. about 10 minutes long, with the doc repeatedly saying "i guess we'll see you on july 1st". he said it at least 3 or 4 times. i told him "see you then." i'm pretty sure neither of us believed the other. that night i had dinner at frankie's 457 in carroll gardens and it was delicious but it got cold that night.

wednesday: interviewed for anesthesia at mt. sinai. i rotated there last october, so i had some idea of what to expect. out of 8 other interviewees, 2 were sinai students, 2 had rotated with me, and 1 had rotated earlier. counting me, that makes 75% of the interviewees. everyone and their mama wants to come to this program it seems. and i loved it while i was there. although to be honest, it didn't feel as much as "home" as i thought it would. and i certainly didn't walk out of there feeling as good about it as i did at NYU. and i didn't get such a "good to see you again" vibe as i was hoping for. i'm sure they're used to students fighting tooth and nail to get in... so score one more for NYU so far. that evening, rodbard and i went to MSG and took in a knicks game and it was awesome. i'd definitely go to lots of games if i match into residency here, since its just a 30-40min subway ride away. we sat in the nosebleed, and the knicks blew a 20 point lead, but they still pulled it out and beat the mavericks in overtime. it was a good game. then we came home and watched the replay on MSGtv. seriously.

thursday: interviewed for preliminary medicine at new york downtown hospital in chinatown. what i knew about the program beforehand was minimal, except that their housing is awesome (in terms of price and location, maybe not necessarily in terms of size and quality). the hospital is a workhorse. 6 days a week, nearly every week. we were told not to expect much time off. the program director was abrasive, arrogant, and challenged us to defend why we applied for transitional years. homeboy was defensive as hell. my interview was equally bad, consisting of a doctor complaining about how stupid his med students were when he was a fellow and he had to teach them, and how much he hated stooping to their level to get them to understand. on the plus side, you can pay $400 for a studio apartment in chinatown. that evening i trekked to the upper west side to have dinner at Rain, a fancy shmancy thai restaurant. the bill was footed by the columbia anesthesiology dept, and the handful of residents that i got to speak with that were seated near my corner of the table were all very friendly and pretty fun to hang with. definitely a good impression of the program.

friday: interviewed for anesthesia at columbia university waaaaaay up in washington heights. about an hour on the subway to get there. i liked the program immediately. it really reminds me a lot of wisconsin's program, in terms of the hospital environment and the resident-to-faculty culture, and the overall gut feeling that i had of the program. the interviews went very well (one was with the program director), except that one of my interviewers called in sick, so my substitute was unprepared (hadn't read my file) and was being rushed through the interview because he had other scheduled interviews to conduct. still, considering the situation, i came out of there with a very good feeling. that night i got very drunk in the lower east side.

saturday: nursed a hangover all day. got very nauseous later that afternoon. slept a lot. decided to go out to union square that evening after it got really really really fucking cold and shitty and hailing. that was a bad idea. had some drinks at the coffee shop bar or something. the plantain chips with black bean dip were to die for, but good lord was it cold out.

sunday: aka today. wrote some thank you notes. listened to a lot of hot chip. i've been listening to a LOT of hot chip lately. good shit, hot chip. helped tamar make a spinach and mushroom lasagna, then we made a strawberry trifle cake, which i will eat all of within the next day if they let me. then we watched intervention. and now i'm going to try to finish sputnik sweetheart and go to bed.

goodnight.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 11:35 PM |