The evening of match day, my classmates gathered at the W Hotel in Downtown Minneapolis to celebrate. My contacts were attacking my eyes so by Dr’s orders I was glasses girl.
Carmen and I will both train at Mayo!
The Syncytium
(Left to Right: Carmen, Erin, Christina, Erin, Me, Meghann) 
Meghann, Jessica, Erin (My body buddy from Anatomy!), Me, and Erin
Our better halves: (Left to right: John, Jon, Ryan, Mark, Ryan)
This concludes the Match Day Festivities.
Match day brought much excitement and good news to our family! I wanted to share a little about the events of the day.
The match day ceremony was held at the McNamara Alumni Center on campus (the building pictured above). Most of the 4th year students were there. I was lucky enough to sit at a table with my best friends in med school. To demonstrate how nerdy we are, we nicknamed ourselves “The Syncytium.” According to wikipedia, a syncytium is a large cell-like structure filled with cytoplasm containing many nuclei. In many types of tissue, the syncytium works together, such as in cardiac and skeletal muscle. Enough with the biology lesson. During the first two years of medical school, we worked together. We would create study guides and share them with each other. We, like a syncytium, worked better together and were able to do better than if we were to work and study individually. Wow, I’m done with that analogy. During the 3rd and 4th years of medical school, we were rotating at different hospitals and didn’t see each other very often. However, we have Syncytium Reunions (aka lunch or dinner dates) often to keep in touch. I have been so lucky to have such a great group of friends. Five of the six girls are married and it’s great that our spouses get along as well. Introducing the Syncytium (and our better halves):
Emily & John
Meghann
Erin & Jon
Erin & Ryan
Christina & Ryan & their adorable daughter Rachel Emily (Emily is her middle name but I like to emphasize it since it is such an awesome name!)
Carmen & Mark & their beautiful Gabriella (they call her Gabby)
Approximately at 10:30am the program started. Fortunately it was short and sweet because we were all there for one purpose… to open our envelopes. They set up tables around the room that were organized alphabetically. At 11am, we were allowed to go to the tables and pick up our letters. Everyone at my table decided to open our letters together at the table. So I walked over to my table, picked up the envelope with Sharpe, Emily printed on the outside, and came back. As I walked up to John, I started crying. I hadn’t even opened my envelope yet and the tears came. I was overwhelmed with emotion that I was about to find out where we were going to be spending the next four years. John told me to stop crying because he wanted a picture of me holding the envelope. Fortunately he used shallow depth of field so you can’t see the tears in my eyes.
After I had composed myself, almost all of us (minus Erin Louks) posed for a picture with our envelopes:
Enough with pictures holding the envelopes… It was time to open them. At this point I was getting SO SO nervous:
John captured a video of my reaction when I opened the envelope. Forgive the vertical beginning of the video, it must be the photographer in him…
Emily's Match Day from John Sharpe on Vimeo.
In the video, you can hear my friend Christina shrieking in the background when she heard Carmen and I both matched at Mayo in Anesthesiology. Our match lists were completely different except for having Mayo as our first choice. It will be fun to train together. However, her first year she will spend in La Cross, WI at Gundersen Lutheran and I will spend it at HCMC in Minneapolis. And yes, I was emotional again after opening the envelope…
After everyone opened their envelopes, there was much hugging and happiness going around.
After we opened our envelopes, we looked at the match list to see where all our classmates ended up.
John, I love you so much. Thank you for all of your support. I could not have done it without you. You are the best hubs ever! And I love you more.
After the match ceremony, most of my class walked across the street to Sally’s (a bar on campus) for appetizers and drinks. We didn’t take any pictures there but had a lot of fun chatting with everyone who matched!
Match day went well for us. Of course I am excited we matched into our first choice, but I would have been happy at any of my top 3 choices. I think Mayo will be a great place for us. John will be able to continue his wedding photography business in Minneapolis as well as set up a business in Rochester. It will be great to be closer to my mom as well. I am honored that Mayo picked me to be one of their residents. They have such a strong program. I hope I can exceed their expectations.
Thank you to everyone for all your love and support these last few years! I have the best family and friends a girl could ask for.
I matched at HCMC for my intern year and then at Mayo in anesthesiology. We matched at our first choice so we are very happy! I’ll write more later and share more pictures. But it has been an amazing day, one that I will always remember. Did I mention we are happy?
Applying to residency is a process that most are not familiar with. When people apply for med school, law school, dental school, etc, they interview at multiple programs then receive multiple acceptances. Then they have to decide where they want to go. Residency is a little different.
It is similar in that I applied to multiple programs across the country. This happened back in September. Then I waited and waited for interviews. I received interview invitations from eight programs: Baylor, University of Colorado, Oregon Health Sciences University, University of Arizona, University of Minnesota, Mayo Clinic, University of Utah, and University of Michigan. Much of my time in November and December (and a little bit of January) was spent interviewing at these programs. Anesthesiology is unique in that I also needed to apply to intern programs (my first year of residency). So I interviewed at one in Portland, OR, one in La Crosse Wisconsin, and two here in Minneapolis.
Residency interviews were a lot more fun than medical school interviews. Most programs paid for a nice hotel and treated us to a fancy dinner the night prior to the interview. Also when I applied for medical school it seemed like the programs wanted to know why they should accept me (except for my U of Minnesota interview where he told me why I should choose Minnesota). However, in my residency interviews, approximately half of the time was spent answering my questions about the programs. They were trying to convince me to choose their program. I definitely liked this aspect. The interviews didn’t feel so one-sided. We were both testing the waters. I was seeing if I could see myself training at their program and living in their city. And they were checking out if my personality fit with their program and residents. I definitely enjoyed the interview process.
Now that my interviews were complete, I had to develop my “rank list.” This is where the process differs from most graduate schools. Instead of receiving acceptances from these different programs, I had to rank them on a list mostly without any feedback from them. Number one on my rank list was supposed to be my favorite and number eight was supposed to be my least favorite. This was much more difficult than I anticipated. I was lucky in that I enjoyed all the programs I interviewed with but by the end of the process, the details started to blur together. Something else I had to consider was once I listed a program on my rank list, if I ranked there, I was in a contract to go to that program. Some of my classmates didn’t rank some of the programs they interviewed at because they wouldn’t want to train there. Again, I was lucky and didn’t have to worry about this. Then the programs go through a similar process. They develop a rank list of all the applicants they interviewed. The rank lists get submitted to the NRMP (the National Resident Matching Program) near the end of February and then we are matched via a fancy algorithm. You can read about the details here if you so desire.
So now this week is the week I’ve been waiting for. Today we were supposed to find out IF we matched but not where. So at 11am I received an email from the NRMP that stated:
“Congratulations. You have matched.”
A wave of relief passed through my body. I was not going to have to experience “The scramble” or “Rematch.” This occurs for students who do not match with a program. Tomorrow they will gather and will start making phone calls to all the programs in the country who have open spots. They are literally scrambling for a spot. I am very happy that I will not know how this process works.
So now it all comes down to Thursday. At 11am. (12 eastern). I will find out where we will spend our next four years. But I am content right now to know that I will become an anesthesiologist.
So where do you think we will end up?
Oh, and to clarify about my previous post, all of my requirements to graduate are finished but I am not officially an MD until I graduate May 7.
I took this from Haley Anderson's blog and she got it from this Etsy store. This could make a great graduation gift.
