Erin: The Match from Tanzania

I’m sure that waiting around for the match has been stressful for everyone, but for some reason, it was a lot tougher for me here than I expected. Not only did we miss supernight and have yet to hear about where everyone else has matched, but since Eastern Standard Time is 7 hours behind me, I didn’t find out where I matched until the end of the work day Thursday. I’m not sure if it actually counts as an extra day, because I probably only found out half an hour after everyone opened their envelopes (thank you Chow & Laura!), but it was almost 8PM!

Just so you get an idea of how I’ve been feeling, I’ll tell you about a dream I had the night before we found out if we needed to scramble or had matched into a program. I dreamt that I had matched into a program called “Girls and the Sea” that I hadn’t even interviewed with. I sat in on a meeting to learn about the program, and it seemed to be a subsection of the Columbia-Presbyterian Internal Medicine, but it focused on skills necessary to become a cultured woman. I worried that I might not get enough exposure to patients and the ICU to feel competent in my medical skills, and I was also worried that I might starve on the strict diet of tea and crumpets.

After all that worry, I matched into my first choice: Albert Einstein-Montefiore! I assume I matched into one of the primary care programs, but I’ll have to check the list to see which one (Monte has 2). It serves 3 free meals a day, suckers! I’m really exited, although it’s a bit strange feeling that much closer to the end of fourth year, knowing that everyone will start moving all across country, and soon after that we’ll be given an enormous amount of responsibility for our patients… I’ll think about that when I get back. No need to scare myself yet :)

Tell us about your match experiences!!