Yay! I matched!

Yay I matched! No, that doesn't mean i found my mate on an internet site, that means I found out today at noon (online, no less), that I will in fact be moving on to a family medicine residency next year, as a match means that at least one program said "hey kid, we like you, come on board...". On Thursday, I'll find out where I matched to, and that's a BINDING contract. Yup, I've ranked programs in California, Arizona, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Maryland, and on thursday I'll find out which wonderful state I'll be moving to for the next three years of my training. So back to the binding contract -- I ranked programs, 1 to 10. And they ranked applicants. A computer program runs through an algorithm and spits out the matches for residents and programs, and whatever I get on Thursday I've gotta stick with. I've signed a contract by entering into the match. Yes, it sounds incomprehensible because in most other professions you apply for jobs or schools and you have your pick after they tell you they like you. This year is the first year we even get to see our contract for the next three years (salary, benefits, other issues), while interviewing. Before this year, you would only see your contract AFTER matching (the American Medical Student Association pushed for that to happen, and it's good progress in this crazy world of matching and residency). I'm so nervous/excited for thursday!

In other news, my medical school has a new curriculum for the first and second year medical students, something that's taken a long time and a lot of thought to put together. One of the new pieces is a section called Physicians' Core -- with lectures and small group sessions on humanism, professionalism, advocacy, etc. As part of this, I've been invited to speak to the first years about Advocacy and Activism, specifically on universal health care and my experience as Jack Rutledge Fellow at AMSA last year. The other panelists are physicians, which is great but it's hard to send a message about the importance of "medical student" activism when there aren't other current med students on the panel (the two others who were invited are in other countries this month...though i know there are more than two other med students who are involved in activism). I'm probably going to talk about changes that med students have made in universal health care and related issues, and maybe even show a short clip of the Sea-Couver video we made with med students asking seattle citizens and vancouver citizens about their health care experiences and then discussing amongst themselves what positive changes they can make). But 15 minutes! That's such a short amount of time! There will be a Q&A session, so that's good. Any advice for the talk -- some motivational stuff for first year med students?

And lastly, the recent mentions of this blog have been fun to check out -- All About George (dope site, along with Negrophile) mentions Andru's post on running a clinic for the uninsured, Saurav (Dark Days Ahead) and Thinking Nurse heart us, and Nick mentions some 4th year bloggers who are matching this year! Doctor Disgruntled is disgruntled at the news of Andru's clinic for the uninsured, but Andru comes back with a one, two punch with this and that response.