Some Dayton Updates...

So I'm nearing the end of my time in Dayton, it went by crazy fast. Probably because I was so busy and always trying to normalize my sleep schedule...such is the life of an ER doc I suppose. All the docs here say that's the worst part, the continuous changing of sleep cycle. It really hasn't been too bad though, I actually went running at 3am one night on base, it was pretty awesome.

I have my last shift on Tuesday and I'm doing our "final presentation" that we're required to do. We also have to take a "final exam" or something on the last day. This pretty much sucks because I've heard it's random and impossible to study for. Also, my test taking track record always haunts me. After that last shift I still have like 5 days in Dayton until my flight to San Antonio, so I'm hopefully going to climb and explore a bit more.

I had my interview last week and overall, I think it went great! (but who really knows, they could've thought i was the weirdest person ever lol) I consider myself personable but when it comes to the "official dog and pony show interview" i tend to get nervous. I just am not a fan of putting on a show for people and selling myself with all of this "i'm going to tell you what you want to hear BS". And there are A LOT of applicants that I've met, not just here, but everywhere, that seem to be great at this. Maybe it's a negative thing that I somewhat struggle with the specific formalities of the things you're "supposed" to say in an interview. But, that's just not me. Sure I can interview well, but the second I try to pretend to be somebody I'm not, it goes down hill and I lose my train of thought and end up sounding like a tard. So, as I was preparing for this interview, which by the way was the biggest interview that I'll have since it's my #1 choice, I tried to not over rehearse or have any "canned" answers.  I had main points that I wanted to touch on, but I mainly tried to focus on staying calm, being myself.

My first interview was with the Chief resident. It was pretty laid back but certainly covered all the main questions, i.e  Why ER, Why AF, What are you good at, what do you suck at, etc. It was cool, but to be totally honest, the interview seemed really formal for what I was expecting from a resident. The other students confirmed that he was sort of too "by the book".  He was really nice and everything, I just felt like he was rushing through questions he "had" to ask and that made it seem somewhat impersonal.

The second interview was with the program director, and the session I was the MOST nervous for. So after all of the build up, this session turned out to be my favorite one so far. This doc (who was the same guy with the situs invrsus kid i wrote about in my previous post) is absolutely, without a doubt, one of, if not, my most favorite AF doc. We hadn't had anytime together on any shifts so I was worried he wouldn't know me that well. But as soon as we started talking it was crazy because it was so casual and informal. I honestly felt like I was talking to one of my best ROTC friends, and that made me feel really good. He didn't ask me any of the typical questions. He flat out told me he was really happy to see how much we had in common (he did ROTC also) and he wanted to hear about how I've gotten to this point. This interview was more like I was talking to a friend, it was really crazy. He wanted to hear about my ROTC life, my maintenance experiences, and how the heck I managed to get out of that to go to med school...apparently he understood how difficult that is. So i talked about that and how it started out as something I hated, but turned into one of the best experiences of my life, how it made me who I am today. I mentioned how I sort of feel like "fit in" better with my air force friends and what it means to me. Towards the end of the talk, he said some things that make me feel like the interview was a success. He told me that I'm a really unique applicant for a few reasons. The prior service thing, being in charge of more than 50 people, which in the med group, you only do when you're Lt. Col or above (aka i have more leadership experience already than him and most of the residents and practicing docs lol). But the thing that he said that made me really happy was that he told me I reminded him of himself and he could tell by my enthusiasm that I was being real. Going back to my whole thing of hating the formality of an interview, this was awesome to hear. Not only did I feel like I could be totally myself with him, he picked up on the fact that this conversation was different than the usual fake interview. That's an overall success for me, no matter what happens.

So i guess it's out of my hands now, I did my absolute best, and left it all on the field, so to speak. I know there are LOTS of people interviewing and competing against me, I just hope I'm different enough to stand out when the board meets. But if not, if I have to fight my way through again and do a general medicine year, that;s ok too. It's not like I haven't been in that position before, except that was worse lol. I'll be fine because even when it doesn't work out, it actually does, just in a different way. ;-)