Tight-Lippedness, Ankle-Blisters, And Typos. Or, My Medical School Interview Day

Diana!!! :D I couldn't wait to prattle on to you about my interview day, so I decided to do a gif-story instead. Enjoy! :)

So, I actually went to bed at a decent hour Sunday night, woke up at 6:45 am, and got to the Health Science Center at about 8:43 am. I was only nervous for about .0025 seconds, and then I was excited. Like, excited.

"I'm finally here for the interview! I'm back! This interview's gonna be fine. I'm going to talk to other people of my own volition and it's gonna be great!"

Not quite.

I expected everyone to be making, "who are you? I'm ____. Where do you go to school? Read any good books lately?" small talk. In a stunning turn of events, I was ready to approach people and start chatting them up! Shocking. I know. I've yet to fully understand this sudden burst of extrovertedness.

However, the people I sat next to in the foyer were not chatty. :( I don't know if they were nervous or contemplating their interview or what, but they didn't have the usual "Let's make small talk and learn each others names!" attitude that I usually find in large gatherings. I felt like I was the chatty one.

Let me write that again: I was the chatty one.

It was so . . . weird. So against the natural order. I'm the quieter one. What was going on here? It didn't end there. Even when we went to the other rooms, I felt like no one was in chatty-small-talk-let's-make-friends-mode. Then again, I was excited and happy; maybe everyone else was too nervous to talk.

We all milled into a room for Dr. Jones' presentation, and I was still on my early-morning interview day high. I just kept thinking, "I'm at an interview day! This is it. For real! The interview day!" I was grinning and looking around the room only to realize that no one else was grinning. Oh, well.

During the presentation, I heard a lot of UTHSCSA things that I already knew, and I felt curiously protective of the school. I kept thinking, "Do these students like the school? How could they like anywhere else more? Do they get how great this school is?"

So, the presentation was going nicely for 10 minutes until . . . one of my favorite classroom occurrences happened: the fire alarm went off!

We all milled to the end of the hallway and stayed next to the doors. Dr. Jones said that if the fire marshal started walking in our direction, we would all walk out then.

When Dr. Jones asked for questions, I asked one about the new RGV med school and how it would affect UTHSCSA 3-4 years who want to work in the RAHC (answer: they may no longer be able to. Bummer . . . ). When he called on me, he said "Yes, Diana." 0_0 Then I asked my question and he said, "Kelsey just asked about (reiterates my question for everyone)." He has a lot of people whose names he tries to remember, so I really don't mind that he got mine wrong the first two times. I just thought it was funny that he called me by your name first.

I thought it was weird how few people asked questions. I was expecting everyone to be a type-A personality. I thought everyone would be asking smart questions and getting involved.

But . . . nope. Didn't happen. Even on the tour later, few people asked questions. If I didn't already know a lot about the school, I would've packed a bunch of questions to pepper people with. So few people asked questions. Why?! Don't they like UTHSCSA?! Don't they see how awesome this school is?!

Anyhoo, after that, I got to talk to Stephen as we walked back to the classroom. I didn't know he had applied to/interviewed at UTMB. I only checked off the UTHSCSA box on the application. I didn't see a point in applying elsewhere; UTHSCSA has my heart.

When we broke into groups for our tour, Fredo was in the group that joined with mine, so I got to talk with him. It was nice having someone who actually wanted to chat! Also, it felt slightly weird to see him in autumn/a non-SPA context.

It was so great to see my cohort-people there and have people to talk to!

(Yes, I chose a Pooh-bear gif for this one. That's how cheery and happy my cohort-people make me.)

During the tour, I was hardly listening to the tour-guide med students because I was talking to Fredo and marveling about how everything we toured was familiar:

- The anatomy lab. I remember Alistair taking us there for the first time and explaining to Andrew what "mortui vivos docent" meant.

- University Hospital. So many people we shadowed there. So many times we walked there in the morning.

- The walkway between the hospital and the medical school where you can see the building they've been working on since we started going there. I remember all those times I had to walk around construction on my way to Walgreens.

- The library. The computers where we printed out our journals in the mornings. The classrooms we've had different classes in. The desk where we paid for copies.

- The different hallways and elevators. Everything felt familiar, like, "Yup, this is UTHSCSA."

- The clinical skills lab and the clinical skills instructor we had.

- The blue mail-drop-off box between the medical school and the clinical skills building. I've sent my Father's Day card through there for a few years now.

- The foyer in the library with the Subway, Starbucks that used to be a pizza place, and snack place where I bought my granola bars.

It felt so familiar. I felt like I belonged there. Somehow, it's one of my places in the world now.

From there we went to lunch and ate lunch and had mints (nobody accepted my tic-tacs :/ ) and had mild conversation. Most talking was directed toward the medical students at our table. I made the mistake of sitting in the middle of my table, so people on either side of me faced away from me to talk to the med students. Consequently, no one really conversed with me. :/

My first interview was in 211L Medical School. I was assured that this was one of the library rooms since the library was a part of the medical school building. I took their word for it. Not a good decision.

Ten minutes before my first interview at 1:00 pm, I can't find my room in the library (3rd floor), so a med student walks with me to the floor below, but the numbering system is still different. After looking at my paper, he notes that those rooms are in a different part of the building. The interview is now 10 minutes away. 7 minutes of power-walking later and we're in that area of the medical school where all the hallways look the same and people have their offices and research posters on the hallway walls. We go down one hallway . . . in the wrong direction . . . turn around, keep walking and finally find the right room. With 2 - 3 minutes to spare, I arrive for my first interview in time. Thank you, random med student! You do UTHSCSA proud with your friendliness!

My first interviewer was super nice. You were completely right - it was very laid back, conversational, and super-chill. I was expecting a lot of questions about the healthcare system, current events, and tough ethics situations, but all of her questions were pretty standard: how did you get here (medicine and this school), an ethics question about what'd you do if one of your friends (who you were studying for the MCAT with) had all of their MCAT stuff stolen, how do you work in groups, etc., One of her comments freaked me out, though.

When I was explaining why I decided to be a doctor, I explained why I didn't want to be a nurse/NP/PA/researcher. I mentioned that I felt I would be limited in knowledge and experience if I became a PA. This made a lot of sense to me; I've always read about PAs having a two yearish program and being able to do less than NPs. I know that where responsibilities overlap with doctors', they do a comparable job. I get that. It's not that they treat earaches in an inferior manner, it's that they can't do the complex stuff. That's what I meant by being held back by less knowledge and experience.

After my answer, she talks for a minute-ish about how that's wrong and PAs can do a lot or can do the same things. Ugh! It sucks to be told you're wrong about something during your interview. My face started to feel warm, and I hoped it I didn't look to bummed out. I felt kinda guilty for getting called out on this, especially since I knew what I meant and was pretty sure that I was right.

She said that you'd only be held back if you didn't learn more beyond medical school. Of course, when I was talking about Drs vs PAs, I was including residency in the total knowledge-experience bundle for doctors compared to PAs. Maybe she didn't know that. *sigh* I'm just worried that she'll think I didn't know what I was talking about.

Other than that, the interview went well. At least, I think so. I hope she does, too. I then walked to the clinical skills building and waited around, reading brochures for 45 minutes.

BTW, I found a typo in the brochure!!! It lists a "McKelvery" park in Harlingen. It's really "McKelvey" park. I was so excited! And I had no one to share it with . . . :(

During this time, I met a girl named Alyssa. She said this was her first time applying; she put it off for a year to start a masters because she felt her application wouldn't be strong enough. She congratulated me on getting through the first time. It made me feel a little bit guilty for being in the program. I felt a little lesser compared to all these people who got there the hard way and really had to worry about it.

I wonder how they saw the interview day? Were they nervous? How much did they practice questions? I kept thinking about how my experience of the day was so much different from everyone else's.

Anyhoo, 2:30 pm rolls around and my next interview starts . . . and it lasts for all of 15 minutes. This interviewer took out a piece of paper and a pen, and started by asking me my name, my college, and my major. The rest were standard why medicine, shadowing experience, basic ethics questions. However, throughout this interview, he looked up maybe once per minute. He spent almost the entire interview hunched over the paper writing notes.

I found it very unsettling. I felt like he didn't really care about what I was saying, and so I was a lot less talkative, eloquent, and informative than I had been with the first interviewer. Every time I gave an answer, it felt too short and simple. It felt bizarre. After answering, I would stare at the wall behind him as he wrote his notes and think, "What is wrong with me? I can do better than that."

It felt odd. It was as if he was drafted into doing this and didn't really care about it. When I asked him questions, his answers were very laconic where my first interviewer's had been informative and involved. It just felt very odd. I'm still wondering about it.

And it was so short! I mean, it was 15 minutes! Did he only prepare those questions? Did he expect me to talk more or ask more questions? I don't know. I just don't know.

Also, I was so flummoxed by the whole thing that I forgot to ask about his MD/MPH degree. I wanted to learn why he got the MPH and how it colored his mind as a physician.

I don't know. It was different. Really different . . .

After that, I hung around for the refreshment social afterwards, wrote my penpal a letter while eating a brownie, spoke to Stephen and Fredo one last time, said "hi" to Mentor-Nick (who said not to worry about that second interview), and said "hi" to Dr. Jones (who greeted me by my real name! :D ). I think I saw Ms. Belinda, but she was speaking with some other people, and I didn't want to disturb her. All in all, it was a good day.

Oh, wait. I forgot to mention the ankle-blisters part.

So, I bought these nice 2" heels at the Naturalizer store. All their shoes are super comfy, so I figured the same would go for their heels. I would be able to walk in comfort all day and not limp in agony after 8+ hours of walking. It would be great.

Foolish last words . . .

Halfway through the tour, my feet feel like this:

My toes are being rubbed too much and the narrow backs of the shoes are rubbing large, perfectly spherical blisters into my ankles. Not fun. By the time my mother picks me up (I still feel kinda weird for having my mother pick me up at a medical school interview, but that's what I get for not knowing how to drive), I am slightly limping towards the car. Moral of the story: never wear heels again. Ever. The perfect pair does not exist.

And that's the end. Afterwards we went to Half Price Books and I got:

1) David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell's new book. It is FASCINATING. I'm so glad I found it.

2) A book on Norwegian (yay!) without the audio cd (boo!). I can't believe I found a Norwegian book. I almost never find Norwegian language books!!!

3) A book on Noah Webster and the development of American culture

Thanks for reading my overly detailed account of everything that happened that day! :)

No, I did not forget the obligatory Supernatural random-gifs-section:

I would read it.

Yes, it is incredibly ridiculous, and I am slightly ashamed of how funny I find it.

Yep, here's another one.

I'm not a Cas/Dean shipper, but this one was too ridiculous to pass up. It's 1:10 am; maybe that's why I'm laughing too much at these.

I had to add this gif; he is rather sharp-looking in this one.

Had to add this one, too. For obvious reasons. *cough*

Gah! I'm in Dean-withdrawal. We need to watch Supernatural! How busy are you going to be during dead-days?

Okay, I'll stop.

After one more.

JK!