Doctorly Stuff

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One of the Only Times I Think Email Is an Inferior Means of Communication

One thing I bet you don’t think about when (if) you think about a doctor’s training is the enormous number of thank you notes s/he will have to write.

Not to put too exact a number on it, but s/he will have to write a LOT of thank you notes.

A lot a lot.

A thank you for every letter of recommendation – and you need recommendation letters for med school itself, residency, and fellowship. Possibly you’ll also need recommendation letters for when you apply to an actual clinical position as well, I don’t know for sure as we have not yet reached that point.

A thank you for every interview – again, for med school, residency, fellowship, and beyond.

And, well, I suppose that’s it. But considering how many residency and fellowship programs you apply to, it could be a lot.

Also, as I found out after my husband’s interview last week, you might not interview with just ONE person. Oh no! He had EIGHT INTERVIEWS with nine different people.

(One of his Chief Residents said that he’s never heard of a person having more than 14 interviews at one program. FOURTEEN. Holy cats!)

So let’s do some math here… (Which I typically avoid at all costs but TODAY I’M FEELING FRISKY.)

Say my husband applied to 60 fellowship programs (which is more or less accurate).

Say he then gets interviews at 30% of those programs.

Say that he goes through an average of five interviews at each of those 20 programs.

That’s an upper-limit of 100 thank you notes!

Consider, though, the guidelines my husband’s Chief Resident gave him:

  1. You don’t need to write a thank you note to everyone, if you had more than X interviews at one program. Instead, you would write a note to the program director, the fellowship director, and anyone you felt a special connection with during your interviews.
  2. If you had fewer than X (which is still undefined – I need to ask my husband) interviews at a program, you would want to write a thank you note to everyone.
  3. You need to make sure that every. single. thank you note is different because, apparently, everyone will compare notes. (I mean, this is sort of common sense, right?)

So maybe 100 thank you notes is a stretch, but certainly 40 or even 50 is NOT.

Let me be clear: I am all for writing thank you notes. My parents drummed it into me my entire childhood. And while I sometimes FAIL and do not write a thank you note, this failure results in guilt that NEVER subsides. Ever.

(Brief Detour: We registered for our wedding china at Macy’s, which has the nice feature of showing who bought you what on their website. So we knew that a setting of our china had been purchased, but – through a quirk of the otherwise very helpful system – the name of the gift-giver was unavailable. And then WE NEVER GOT THE CHINA. So I fear that there was some horrible misunderstanding/shipping mistake/crooked wedding-china enthusiast slash UPS driver that resulted in the gift-giver believing that we got the china but could never be bothered to write a thank you note. Our wedding took place over two years ago and I still think about this! Someone we love is sitting there, sadly, feeling slighted that we never thanked him/her for the generous china setting!)

So, yes, I am an Avid Thank You Note Proponent. My husband is, too. (Although he is more of a Theoretical Avid Thank You Note Proponent rather than an Actual Thank You Note Writer. In some cases.)

But my husband wants to send these fellowship programs EMAIL THANK YOU NOTES.

Listen, I LOVE email. It is one of my favorite things ever. Approximately 90% of the time I would prefer to communicate via email than via any other communication medium.

But EMAIL THANK YOU NOTES make me cringe!

Yes, I know, doctors… busy… blah blah blah. And I realize that this is the twenty-first century and the rules of etiquette need to bend to fit our newfangled technology like email. Also, I realize that – outside of a wedding or a baby or possibly graduation – writing 50 thank you notes is kind of ridiculous.

Furthermore, the Chief Resident says it’s “preferable” to send thank yous via email so that the fellowship program people can simply print them out and put them in my husband’s file.

To that I say, But isn’t it equally easy to open a creamy envelope, pull out a sheet of soft, sturdy stationary, and put the entire card into my husband’s file?

And wouldn’t it give the fellowship people a nicer perspective of my husband, a busy doctor who made the time to hand-write a heartfelt thank you to each of his interviewers?

I mean, everyone loves receiving mail, right? Fellowship program directors must fall under the umbrella of “everyone”!

It just seems WRONG to send a non-traditional (i.e. email) thank you note for something so important!

Am I alone in feeling this way?

Anyway, for the fellowship thank you notes at least, my opinion is moot.

My husband sent out his first round of email thank you notes yesterday. One of the recipients already emailed him back.

Sigh.

Convenience and “my Chief Resident told me to do it this way” FTW. (Said in a terribly defeated manner.)

(They win more arguments than you’d expect.)

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Friday Interview Anxiety Plus Attempt to Be Positive FAIL

My husband and I have spent approximately 24 hours in one another’s company since last Friday.

It’s been a long, lonely week. And the heavy ceiling of grey clouds that has settled permanently above my apartment is not doing anything to lift my mood.

But! I am trying to be positive because today is my husband’s first interview for fellowship.

Quick recap: My husband spent four years in medical school, is in Year 2 of a three-year residency, and will (hopefully) match at a three-year fellowship program that he’ll begin in 2012.

If getting into medical school is tough, matching at a fellowship is ridiculous. His medical school class was made up of about 100 students. Most of the programs offering fellowships in his specialty have just one or two spots. (And 200 or so applicants for those positions.)

He has several interviews lined up, which is great. There have been a couple of rejections amid the interview invitations, and one instance of being wait-listed. But there are a few dozen (I am not kidding) programs he has yet to hear from.

Today is the first interview, and I am anxious.

For one thing, I want my husband to do well. I know he’s a very strong candidate. But presumably he’s up against a dozen or so of the strongest candidates in the nation. That’s stiff competition.

For another thing, this is a situation I have ZERO control over. I’ve referred to it before as the Physician Uncertainty Principle. It’s not a new thing (see: applying to med school and residency). So you’d think I would be able to simply accept that fact, sit back, and let the cards fall where they may. But oh no. I am anxious.

Anxious because I want my husband to get into a top program – a program that will make hospitals and private practices froth at the bit to hire him after fellowship. Anxious because whatever program he matches at will be our home for at least three years… And I have preferences. Anxious because it’s possible that he won’t match at all. (I wrote and erased that sentence three times. It seems like a bad omen to leave it on the page. But it’s the truth. A possibility we have to acknowledge.) While not matching would not be the end of the world, it would be a hitch in the road. It would mean rethinking our goals for the next few years. It might mean going through this anxiety-producing and expensive interview process again.

And that’s another thing I’m anxious about. The whole process kind of sucks. My husband has to travel all over the country (not cheap) for these interviews. I would obviously like to go with him – especially to cities/states I’ve never visited before – and will try if it’s feasible. But that’s an additional cost. Plus, in order for my husband to be able to attend all these interviews, he has to get his colleagues to cover for him at work. And that means that he’ll be returning the favor. A lot. So that means even less time we get to spend together. Blargh.

The other other thing I’m anxious about is my husband’s top competition: Our good friend.

He’s my husband’s colleague, and he and his wife have become our good friends over the past year and a half. He’s an EXCELLENT doctor. Very smart. Very talented. I’m sure he is as kind and considerate to his patients as he is to his friends.

Of course, these are all qualities my husband has. But they are competing against each other for these limited numbers of spots in a lot of the same fellowship programs.

It’s very hard to look at a program that has one opening… A top program, where they both have interviews… And not want my husband to succeed more than I want our friend to succeed.

YUCK.

(Fortunately, my husband doesn’t have this problem. He has a very genuine “may the best man win” kind of attitude, and I know he would be sincerely happy if our friend “beat” him for a spot.)

(This is just one example of how my husband is a better, kinder person than I am.)

ANYWAY. This whole process is giving me a headache.

Well. Looks like I did a very poor job of being positive. So let’s end on some good things:

–          My husband comes home tonight, so hopefully we’ll get a few hours together before he’s on call tomorrow.

–          I painted my toenails pink, which makes me feel spring-y and beach ready.

–          I have a new stack of good books to read.

–          I found a package of chocolate chip cookie mix in the pantry and miraculously had eggs in my fridge, so now I have cookie dough to keep me sane (if plump).

–          My mom sent me this picture a few days ago and every time I look at it, I smile:

Blue skies, mountains, a goofy dog atop the drifts. That’s winter done right.

Happy Friday, Internet!

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Thursday Randomosity: Mainly Short Bullets and One Really Long Bullet Edition

It’s been a long, cold week filled with much snow. So let’s get straight to the bullets!

* Every time I hear a Rhianna song – any Rhianna song at all – I get the Shy Ronnie chorus stuck in my head.

* Tomorrow I get to attend a fancy holiday party! I am going to wear a fancy dress and some high heels and maybe even some makeup. I have yet to decide whether I will wear stockings. The dress is short, and it will be cold outside, so it seems that stocking are A Good Idea… And yet, I will be wearing peep-toe shoes (which are NOT up for negotiation), and I think it might be some sort of fashion faux pas to wear stockings with peep-toes. Am I wrong? Has the “no stockings with peep-toe shoes” rule gone the way of “no white pants after Labor Day”? (Although I still refrain from wearing white pants after Labor Day, or before Labor Day, to be absolutely honest with you. White pants + generous thighs = giant inescapable microscope on the part of me I least want people to look at.)

* There is something wrong with our local Macy’s. First of all, it’s a stand-alone Macy’s, which is odd to me. In my experience, a Macy’s is usually one of the anchor stores in a mall. But that’s not the main problem. The main problem is that the Macy’s employs approximately four people.

I went there twice last weekend. Once, on the way to dinner at a friend’s house. We wanted to pick up a little hostess gift. We got to the Macy’s about 40 minutes before we had to be at dinner. Our friend’s house was 10 minutes away. (This is beginning to sound like a horrible nightmare of a math problem.) We grabbed a cute package of Frango mints after poking around for five minutes and realized we still had tons of time. So I moseyed into the shoe section where I spotted a cute pair of boots I wanted to try on. I stood there for about three minutes without seeing a single shoe salesperson, so we scrapped that idea and headed immediately to the cashier. If you’re keeping track, that means we had 22 whole minutes to buy the mints and leave.

First of all, we wandered around for about 5 minutes before we found a sales counter that actually had a person at it.

(Let me remind you: This was a Saturday evening two weeks after Thanksgiving.)

Then we found a cashier who was helping one person. Apparently, someone was in line behind that person. Her pile of costume jewelry was holding her place. Which was fine with me – I know the holidays make people crazy, and I can be patient when necessary. My husband, on the other hand, sometimes has a hard time. (Which is weird, because he is INCREDIBLY patient with me. But lines or bad traffic get to him really quickly.) Turns out that these two customers each took FOREVER. My husband even scouted out the rest of the store to see if he could find us an alternate sales counter. He could not.

We got out of there 5 minutes late. As in, it took us 22 minutes to make one tiny purchase.

The next day, we went back so I could try on the boots. There were about 40,000 women in the tiny shoe area and just two people to do all the running and ringing up. It took me 15 minutes to wait in line to have the shoe salesman look at the boots I wanted to try on, and then go in the back to get them. He got so confused, poor guy, that he brought back only two of the three pairs I wanted to try on… And one of them in the size of the girl behind me in line. (I let her try them on while I tried on the other pair.)

It was a mess.

I wonder if that Macy’s just can’t afford to hire enough holiday employees? Or if a bunch of the employees were in the back eating birthday cake? Or if it’s just a really bad combination of slow and/or new employees and excess numbers of customers.

All I have to say is I have renewed appreciation for Zappos.

* I found a Giant Dead Spider and a Tiny Dead Spider in the guest bathtub. I now get creeped out every time I go into the guest bathroom, because the tub is apparently some sort of Final Resting Ground for arachnids. And that is creepy.

* The other day, my husband bought some chestnuts and roasted them in the oven. They are too mealy for my taste. But it felt very festive just to be near them while they were roasting. I suppose it would have been MORE festive if they’d involved some sort of open fire. More festive and also more fire alarm-y.

* Speaking of not-actually-festive things, our apartment complex put up a lovely “happy holidays” notice in all the hallways and stairwells. When you first spot it, you think, “How nice of the administration to get into the holiday spirit!” Until you read it. And then you find out that it is a strongly-worded note forbidding live Christmas trees. After all, live trees are the primary cause of fires in December. Then it ends with asking us to spy on our neighbors and report them if they buy a real tree.

Listen, I am all for Fire Safety. Really, I am. And I am all for requiring that renters buy fake trees. It’s for the Good of the Many, people! But isn’t there a better and less fear mongering sort of way to do it?

* When my husband started residency, he got three white coats. Long white coats, which differentiate the Real Doctors from the Medical Students.  That is one white coat per year, if you’re counting.

Here we are, not yet halfway through the second year of residency, and my husband’s second white coat just bit the dust. His pen exploded in the pocket.

In case you don’t know, Giant Blue Ink Stain + White Coat = Noticeable Problem.

Note to self: Do not use Shout Spray on a Giant Ink Stain.

Second Note to Self: Do not dunk the Now Enormously Huge Yet Slightly Diluted Ink Stain in water.

Third Note to Self: Do not try to Oxy out the Now Astronomically Monstrous Ink Stain That Is Still Spreading and Threatening to Eat Your Face and just throw it away while you’re still alive.

The other white coat is serviceable, but is missing all of its buttons.

* Here’s where I admit to you that I do not know how to sew on a button. While I know this makes a small part of my mother (jokingly) think she failed me as a parent, it has really not hindered my progress as a human in the least. One time a button fell off my coat in college. I was able to get one of the guys who lived upstairs from my dorm room to sew it back on for me.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you can’t teach your kids to sew, at least teach them how to persuade an Econ major into sewing for them. That’s got to be a skill of equal value.

* Facebook felt the need to remind me that my wedding anniversary to “[Husband’s Name Here]” is coming up.

It makes me deeply sad to think that this probably HELPS people remember their anniversaries.

* That said, it’s our anniversary!!! We plan to celebrate by going out to a steak dinner. Because nothing says “I will love you for all eternity” like stuffing yourself silly with meat, amIright?

We’ve been together for so long that it kind of surprises me that we’ve only been married two years. Why, we’re still newlyweds!

The newness of “being married” has worn off, for the most part. But every once in a while, I am struck with wonderment that I am bonded to my husband for life.

It’s a pretty crazy thing, that we found each other. Crazy and wonderful.

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What’s up with you today, Internet?