Match Day
After the excitement of this weekend, I'm happy to announce that I matched at my #1 choice for residency, California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) for internal medicine in San Francisco!
Friday was a wonderful blur of nerves, excitement, and a veritable roller coaster of emotions as my classmates and I found out where we matched for our residencies all over the country.
The first day of spring started off auspiciously as a last minute snowstorm threatened to derail Match Day entirely. Even though the envelopes didn't start going out until noon, the morning of Match started off bright and early as I had to get ready and finish moving the last of my stuff (our lease ends at the end of the month) before the ceremony. My family arrived amidst the snow and sleet, we hauled the mattress to their car, and then spent the last few minutes getting ready before we walked over to the Hippodrome theater just in time.
A snowy and cold first day of spring
We made it!
Nervous classmates before the ceremony in the Hippodrome
Dad was my personal paparazzo
All 160 members of our class
The whole concept of Match Day is a tried and true (some would say antiquated) tradition in the medical field. The grand finale of a year's worth of applications, interviewing, and forming a "rank list" all culminates in finding out where you matched at noon on March 20, 2015 -- Match Day for all fourth year med students across the country.
Our school's Match Day is unique. Instead of everyone opening their envelopes at once at noon, we have somewhat of a show. At noon, a random envelope gets picked from a box and your Match day song is played as you make your way to the stage. The process has been compared to everything from the Reaping to the Sorting Hat. Then, you shake hands with all the Deans of the school and decide whether to open your envelope on stage! You can imagine how nerve wracking it is to reveal your future to an audience of 1000 friends and family members, but I'd say about 90% of our class did it and read their results on stage. Then the whole process repeats until all 160 members of our class are called. We all drop $5 into a Maryland piggy bank on stage, and the last person who is called gets to take the money from the piggy bank (since they had to wait so long) to cover our bar tab that night.
Around 1 pm, after half of my classmates had already been called and I witnessed their joy and for some, disappoint, my name was called. Everything instantly became a blur. Apparently everyone laughed and cheered when my song (I chose "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" for the line "Don't leave me hangin' on like a yo-yo") played, but it didn't even register.
Warning: a boatload of post-ceremony pics ahead as I wanted to get a pic with all of my classmates and my dad played the happy photog.
Roomies
West coast bound (SF and Denver)!
We matched at our #1's!
We're all moving to SF!
Celebratory dinner at Bottega, where we've been waiting to get reservations for a year!
Duck pappardelle
Future San Franciscans--we're doing this all the time next year, right?
Beef cheeks with hominy and and grainy mustard
The real star of the show -- chocolate caramel pie and raspberry goat cheese cheesecake
The chalk board menu
Late night (in this case 9 pm) celebration with the whole class
Maryland, Duke, CPMC, Cooper
CPMC, Northwestern, Maryland, O'Connor, Colorado, Maryland
Cali girls
EVMS, UCSF, CPMC, Tennessee
I couldn't have asked for a better Match Day (minus the snow) and better friends and family to celebrate with. This day will definitely go down in the books.
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ReplyDeleteWe attended an event here this past Sunday & had an awesome experience from beginning to end. They served great food and the salad I had for dinner was delicious. Rent a space here as the service at event space Chicago also was impeccable.
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