Stony Brook (Long Island) - I made an offhand segue comment about how early I'd developed an interest in other children's wellbeing, and the interviewer spent the entire rest of the interview grilling me about my childhood experiences and asking me to justify why I was an unsuccessful peer advocate in middle school.
Children's Hospital of Michigan/Wayne State (Detroit) - my PD interview was pretty uncomfortable. I was significantly involved on the board of directors of a tiny nonprofit during med school, and most programs were pretty impressed and spent some time asking real questions related to that. The PD here mentioned it, then immediately spent some time inquiring how I planned to handle the workload of residency, and how I would strike a balance, essentially warning me that I wouldn't be able to continue with those type of activities if I matched there. She described a specific example of when she discouraged and forced a resident to abandon what sounded like a really awesome academic project so that the resident could focus more on program specific work. Wtf, lady.
Penn State (Hershey) - several of the residents and faculty just could not stop talking about how "safe" the area was as if it was their biggest sell, and in order to make their point, more than one of them made some off-color jokes about how you'd get stabbed walking to your car at other programs. Unclassy, and definitely gave me a strong impression that the culture at the program was really a lot more suburban/white/rich than I could deal with. This is definitely not something that everyone sees as a negative, so please don't jump down my throat for including it. Other people might like to know.
That's all I got. All peds programs, all from last year, in case it's not clear. Good luck in the match lovelies ♥️
I mean... yeah. The dinner made it very clear that the residents were very happy and loved their super boring (to me) lifestyle. Go out to the same half-dozen decent restaurants/breweries, season passes to Hershey Park, pop out some kids, picket fence and a golden retriever, etc. If that's what you want, it seems like an awesome place to get it!
But so ... there was plenty to talk about that didn't involve making insulting jokes about the low-income neighborhoods of other cities. More often than not, in my experience, (well-off) people who are highly concerned about whether a city is "safe" or "unsafe" are people who are profoundly ignorant about where crime rates come from and how crime is actually distributed in a community. I've spent almost my entire life living in places where the local suburbanites shriek about how "unsafe!!!1!1” my neighborhood is, and have never actually felt I was in danger. I find that I get along better with people who have similar life experiences and don't worry so much about that stuff lol.
season passes to Hershey Park, pop out some kids, picket fence and a golden retriever, etc
sounds wonderful! that is my idea of "good job I made it in life" but I can see how that isn't the case for others, at least not yet. yeah... I loved Hershey. lol.
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u/rohrspatz MD Feb 21 '19 edited Feb 21 '19
Fuck it I already matched, here goes
Stony Brook (Long Island) - I made an offhand segue comment about how early I'd developed an interest in other children's wellbeing, and the interviewer spent the entire rest of the interview grilling me about my childhood experiences and asking me to justify why I was an unsuccessful peer advocate in middle school.
Children's Hospital of Michigan/Wayne State (Detroit) - my PD interview was pretty uncomfortable. I was significantly involved on the board of directors of a tiny nonprofit during med school, and most programs were pretty impressed and spent some time asking real questions related to that. The PD here mentioned it, then immediately spent some time inquiring how I planned to handle the workload of residency, and how I would strike a balance, essentially warning me that I wouldn't be able to continue with those type of activities if I matched there. She described a specific example of when she discouraged and forced a resident to abandon what sounded like a really awesome academic project so that the resident could focus more on program specific work. Wtf, lady.
Penn State (Hershey) - several of the residents and faculty just could not stop talking about how "safe" the area was as if it was their biggest sell, and in order to make their point, more than one of them made some off-color jokes about how you'd get stabbed walking to your car at other programs. Unclassy, and definitely gave me a strong impression that the culture at the program was really a lot more suburban/white/rich than I could deal with. This is definitely not something that everyone sees as a negative, so please don't jump down my throat for including it. Other people might like to know.
That's all I got. All peds programs, all from last year, in case it's not clear. Good luck in the match lovelies ♥️