Where Did I Match?

UNITY HOSPITAL, ROCHESTER NEW YORK IT IS!!

And the suspense ends. Rather, it ended about 5 days back. I'll be flying into a beautiful city with some really friendly citizens and I shall look forward to about 6 months of 3 feet of snow :-)

Now that I have had 5 days to breath through and make myself believe that this is actually happening, I'm delighted. I'm a part of a distinguished and delighted group of to-be interns who matched this year. I am one of the few who can look back at Match Week with a fond smile and pat myself on my back and say," Mission Accomplished". I can look at the past two years and say, "Successful Journey". Whoever said that its the journey that matters and not the destination basically never reached the destination. I can't imagine feeling so at peace and satisfied about this journey if I hadn't matched.

But, back to where I matched. Rochester. have I mentioned that I have a thing for everything British except their cricket team? I love their accent, I love the names that they give places, I love their authors, I love their Royalty but I can't imagine wanting to live in England. Eureka!! I get to go to Rochester! Where every name is British, where the houses are so far apart, I get a good rural English feel, where I can stay in a place called Carriage Glenn and behave like I'm so English Royal myself and still get my dose of the USA :-)

I probably chose the worst month to go to Rochester during my interview season - January. But I had to see how bad the snow can get! They say the city blooms in the summer. Guess it is my turn to find out. I'm already excited, nervous, scared, happy, confident yet not so much....it's a myriad of emotions and feelings. One thing I know for certain, I'm actually glad I did not match into a Prelim position. I know I probably would not have said this 2 months ago when I was so intent on wanting Surgery. But the peace I'm getting by knowing that I am in this wonderful program for 3 years and will get out with an Internal Medicine degree under my belt, makes me sleep well at night and makes me calm. Really really calm :-)

I've actually been going through all my interview conversations with the faculty in my head since Friday. I'm glad i had the chance to tell them everything about myself - academics, personal, professional....everything! I can proudly say that they liked me enough to consider me for their program :-) what a confidence boost!!

I'm doubly excited because I even have a friend who matched at Unity. I mean, how cool is that? On Saturday, I just got this message saying,"So guess we have Unity in common, huh?" and I couldn't stop hoping against hope that it really meant what I thought it did.

And it did :-) ha ha!!! I think these three years are going to change me for the better. I can already see myself become more sure about myself. Being in a place like that, not too much city, not too much village, is going to be so great. And I'm so going to become an outdoorsy person. I promise. I'll only be able to utilise 3-4 months for that, so I'm going to make the best of it. No more lazying around :-)

Whew!! Lots of documentation to do, a family trip to be scheduled, packing to begin, house-hunting to start and an international drivers' licence to be applied for. USA baby, here I come!!

Outside My Comfort Zone

A moment of personal victory for me was to receive an E-mail from the Moving Academy of Medicine and Biomedicine telling me that I had been selected among the 40 people from all over India to attend a Foundation Workshop of Clinical and Laboratory Medicine Research. When I initially sent my ICMR proposal to them, I did not expect to get through. It was a wonderful feeling to see that e-mail and know that I had a marvelous experience coming up in the next month. My only regret is that I won't be able to spend my birthday with the people closest to me. However, the way I'll spend my birthday this year sounds pretty great too :-))
On Saturday (4th August), members of Medical and Educational Perspective, a non-profit organisation looking to come up with low-cost innovative equipment to better the health situation in India and other developing countries, visited BJ. We interacted with them and what struck me most was that they were so seriously concerned with wanting to do something to improve Medical Science and Healthcare. There were medical students, MD students, PhD students and Bio-Medical Engineering students too...all with a common goal. It made me ask myself why I, as a budding doctor in India, should not be as concerned about the situation here and strive to do something about it.
Talking to them, I realised how differently we are brought up by the educational system in India. You are moulded to run in a particular direction. Yes, at times you may deviate a little and do something outstanding. But, ultimately, you are pushed onto that straight path with a pre-decided goal. These guys, instead, are forced to think differently and originally. They are forced to use their heads, heart and creativity and imagination. They are forced to take that path which deviates outside of normal and stay there...it is so refreshing!! I was delighted that I managed to interact with them. I was disappointed at the same time, because due to our poor timing (what with it being Final year and prelims coming up), I won't be able to really be a part of the project that they want to undertake here in India..ah well, maybe soon enough...
My Ethics Committee saga may come to an end...I'm not sure yet. I'll need an entire post to describe it. I'm just going to say that if there were ever a bunch of idiots with egos as huge as Jupiter, they were all hand-picked from the various parts of the world they lived in, and placed in BJ Medical College as the Ethics Committee.