Louisville Medicine Volume 65, Issue 12 | Page 15

FEATURE didn’t have a pantsuit on. I also worried about that, “Am I dressed properly? Do we all have to wear pants? Did I miss the pants memo?” My dream for future medical students is for casual interviews where they can wear jeans. But, seeing as this is medical school, I’m sure some applicants would still wear suits to a casual interview because they will think it’s a trick. Residency programs host a dinner and/or a cocktail hour with the resident physicians (and sometimes attending physicians) the night before the actual interview. I found these to be another potential source of extra anxiety. At one of the cocktail hours I attended, out of five female applicants I was the only one drinking an alcoholic beverage. I thought, “Are these applicants judging me? Was I not supposed to get this? It’s kind of weird to drink with an attending doctor that I just met…oh well.” At this point, after reading my flight of ideas about interview season and the Match, you must think I have a negative view of the whole process. However, meeting fellow applicants and seeing new cities definitely outweighed the negatives of the interview trail! I hope that each of my classmates and fellow Radiation Oncology applicants receive the outcomes that they hope for (in their enve- lopes). It’s been a long, crazy journey, but I think I would do it again! Editor’s Note: After completing this article, Bailey matched to one of her top choices, the University of Cincinnati Hospital. Congratulations to her and her family. We wish her all the best as she pursues her career! In addition to that fiasco, I also missed my interview in Boston because of the bombogenesis storm of 2018. For those of you who weren’t watching the Weather Channel during the first week on January, a bombogenesis is a cyclone with hurricane-force winds that rapidly intensifies over time. The massive storm led to a speak- erphone interview with an entire radiation oncology department and multiple phone calls to my airline and hotel trying to get my much-needed money back. Bailey Nelson is a recently matched PGY1 for the University of Cincin- nati Hospital. Speaking of money, the interview trail costs fourth-year medical students thousands of dollars. On top of the residency application fee and away rotations, paying for gas, rental cars, flights, food and hotel rooms will quickly deplete any loan money or savings. Some programs in certain specialties will pay for applicants’ travel fees and hotel costs. I wasn’t so lucky. Another sneaky cost is interview clothing. I had two inter- view outfits (blazers included). And as medical students tend to overanalyze situations, I often hoped at each interview that fellow applicants who I’d met at previous interviews hadn’t noticed that I was repeating outfits. One of my outfits was a dress with a blazer. I was one of the only female applicants at each of my interviews that MAY 2018 13