Interview Thoughts and Random Thoughts

Now that my first round of interviews is over, I have a little time to breathe (and focus on my hard days of work on neuroradiology). Here are some recent thoughts I've collected. First, the post-interview thoughts:

• I wear a suit to all my interviews, as is expected. My suit is kept neatly pressed all the time, and on the mornings of my interviews I sometimes even walk around the house without pants (a la Seinfeld) while getting ready so that they don't get wrinkled unnecessarily early in the day. Also, I make sure my belts are tied, shoes are polished, and ties are straight. In other words, I make sure I look slick.
  
  Well on one interview a few weeks back, I was interviewing with the program director and sitting directly across from him with no desk between us. I may not have had the world's greatest answers, but at least, I felt, I looked damn good. Of course, nothing ever goes perfectly for me ... because afterwards I went to the bathroom, only to realize my fly had been open the entire time. Man, so close!
  


• I've noticed a mildly interesting association between gender and subspecialty choice. At some point during the interview day when all the interviewees are together in one room, we will be asked in what, if anything, we plan to sub-specialize. The trend I've noticed is that girls are interested in pulmonary medicine while guys are interested in cardiology. (And during the tour at my second interview, these two guy interviewees suddenly disagreed on a minor point about cardiology. They went back and forth a few times and then started geeking out -- they began bickering loudly over this useless point, drawing the attention of everyone in the tour. Not wanting to get caught up in this extraordinarily embarassing show, I quickly dropped back to the girls and starting showing newfound interest in the lung.)
  


• Updates from my night at Days Inn (aka, my night in the ghetto motel). The night actually improved: I figured out how to connect the light switches to the lamps; I got the bathroom light working after flipping the switch on and off about ten times; and most importantly, I was able to jerry-rig (gerry-rig? Jerry-rig?) the curtains so that I had some privacy (I used the clip on my hospital name badge to connect both of the thick curtains to each other so that they covered the majority of the window). However, the best part of the night -- which I failed to mention in my original post -- is that the hotel offered FREE wireless internet. That amenity more than redeemed Days Inn in my eyes.
  

Here are some other random thoughts collected as of late:

• I was at the farmer's market one morning last weekend, standing in front of one of the vegetable stands. This stand had a big box of fava beans, and upon seeing them I told my girlfriend "Ha, some people would die if they ate these", referring to favaism, seen in some G6PD patients (causing their red blood cells to lyse open). Some woman next to us overheard me say this and immediately began asking me "what? why? why?" and freaking out. Not wanting to get into the details with her, I just mumbled something about allergies and walked away.
  


• Financial aid disbursements haven't arrived yet, and tuition is due soon ... because I got a bill from my school for $21,000! That is a lot of money. Paying off my student loans will take a looong 30 years. (My blog entry on the day I finish paying it off will probably be my happiest one ever.)
  


• I finally found out that I passed the USMLE Step 2 CS. I still grumble over the $1000 I had to cough up to prove them I know how to speak English.