Scrambling fucking sucks, but you get over it eventually

What a freaking year! I'm sorry to my faithful follower for not posting in awhile, hope anyone reading this is doing well. What has been going on in my world since I last updated my blog? I high passed my cardiology rotation, which was impressive considering I half assed the shit out of it. Word of advice: if you can pick who evaluates you, pick the people who think you are doing a good job. I wasted a shit ton of money on interviews thinking I wanted to be a pediatrician. I thought I got really good feedback and did pretty well. There were a couple of places I absolutely LOVED and really wanted to go to. There were a few places I had nightmares about being matched at. I was exhausted by the end of my season, but overall I felt pretty good about things. I still had this slight nagging suspicion that I might not match, but it was just one of those "you've sucked at everything else, so why wouldn't you suck at this too?" type feelings, nothing really concrete to support it. I even got a really great email from my number one choice, from one of the people who interviewed me saying she was so happy to have met me and really thinks I'd be a great fit for the program and that everyone really liked me and I was a delight and blah blah blah. So at that point I was getting pretty confident that I was going to get my top choice. I even started apartment hunting, just little things on craigslist and whatnot, just to see what the market was like. Boy did I jinx myself. DO NOT START LOOKING AT APARTMENTS UNTIL YOU MATCH. Because let me tell you, overconfidence is a silent killer of medical students. Here is how match week works, for those of you who are getting close to your fourth year. In February you put in your rank list. Then you sit there until the middle week in March, twiddling your thumbs and wondering where the fuck you are going to be spending the next 3+ years of your life, and rethinking every decision you've made, and questioning your judgement, and wondering why you are STILL in medical school and if you are ever going to get out of there alive, but really probably not doing much else with your time. Then, it is finally Match Week. Monday you get an email saying whether or not you matched. Friday, if you were lucky enough to have matched, you open your envelope and find out where you are going. You spend the rest of Match week feeling smug and complaining about how you don't know where you are going yet and it is just so exciting. Fuck you. Here is what happens when you don't match. First hand experience here ladies and gentlemen, you can't find better information than this. You get an email from the NRMP with a subject line that says "did I match?" and you get all excited and get butterflies in your stomach and then you go somewhere private to open it just in case and the first thing you see is "No. I'm sorry but you did not match." Similarly to opening that email that says you failed the boards, you read it at least five hundred times over and over again, not believing it, wondering why this is happening to you, and generally are in a state of complete shock. Then you realize you've got to go fix your life AGAIN. If you are an idiot like me, you're in the middle of a rotation (luckily just watching movies) so everyone knows that you didn't match. And by everyone I mean 14 people. Then all your excited friends start texting you to find out if you matched, and you get to start telling people that no, you did not. Then you burst into tears and call your mom because really life cannot be any worse. But then, you pull yourself together. Not because you are strong and amazing, but because you have no other fucking choice. Four years of medical school are about to go flush themselves down the toilet if you don't scramble into a spot. They created a new system for us, and let me tell you, it is actually kind of nice. You go upstairs and find all the other people that had to scramble (hey buddy, fancy meeting you here) and sit down with your speciality mentor and cry for a bit. Then you get this list of all the open programs that you can apply to. You send out your application and wait. Later that day the schools start calling you. Because they are freaking out too. Holy shit we have open spaces! We must fill them! You spend a day and a half doing phone and skype interviews and then on Wednesday morning you hope to GOD someone liked you enough to take you, or at least that they are desperate enough to take you. Wednesday you sit down with your computer and the first round draft begins. If you are lucky (like I was) you get an offer right away. Some get more than one option and can choose where they want to go. Some unlucky bastards don't get accepted anywhere and have to wait two hours to see if another offer comes in. Luckier people find out where they are going on Wednesday, go home and spread the good news, and pass out for the next day. Masochists like me decide to still go to Match Day brunch and try to be happy for others while secretly hating them just a little for the ease with which their lives pass. What else happens that week? On Monday I got many "you'll do great we love you" texts from friends. I also went to a brunch place and had the most awesome French Toast with cinnamon and caramel and deliciousness to drown my sorrows. I then went back to my house and refused to talk to anyone except the few schools that called me. But, I also made a very important decision. Fuck pediatrics. Maybe the reason I'd been freaking out so much for the past couple of months is that I didn't actually want to be a pediatrician. Maybe all my wonderful experiences in psychiatry, my love of difficult situations and talking to people, my fear of procedures and hatred of much of medicine, were really a sign that I wasn't supposed to go into the field I thought I was supposed to. Bright side! I changed professions before it was too late. All that debating about whether or not I should go into psych instead of peds was decided for me. Peds didn't want me. So try something else. So I re-applied to pediatric programs and applied to psych programs. And I only heard back from psych programs (well, one peds program but that was it). And psych sounded nice. Good schedule, nice people, lots of options. And you wonder why you spent thousands of dollars interviewing when you could have just scrambled in the first place (risky, don't do it) and you try to cheer yourself up. The rest of the week is spent reminding yourself that everything happens for a reason. Because it does, I'm likely to be happier in psych than I would have been in peds. This may have been a sign from God to change my course (why he couldn't have told me BEFORE is beyond me), and I'm really probably going to enjoy my new field more. That doesn't change the fact that you feel like you've been punched in the face so hard you are amazed nothing broke. It is the worst blow to your professional self esteem. And you wonder, what the FUCK did I do wrong at my interviews? Because although I heard many a "any program would be lucky to have you" at the end of the day not a single one wanted me. And that is a hard thing to get over, even if you are happy with where you end up and how things worked out. It may have all been for the best, but it is the WORST way to find what is for the best. Every action for the last four years has been re-thought and re-played and I wonder why I suck so damn much. They tell you that the scramble is completely anonymous, the only people that know are the Dean of Student Affairs, you, and the program you join. But that is a load of horseshit. Because people text all day on Monday "did you match? did you match?" and you have to make the choice: do I lie? Or do I just own up to it? Also, you've spent a lot of time talking to people about where you interviewed and where you liked, so come Match day, if you mention some place you've never talked about before, people figure it out. Also, if you change specialities like I did, people figure it out. But, you can fuck with people a little bit, which is always fun. I enjoyed seeing the expression of people's faces when I told them I was going into psych and they were like "wait, I thought you wanted peds" and I just walked away. Or the guy who when I told him where I was going said it was a nice place and I blurted out "I don't know, I've never been there." And he was like "except on your interview you mean." And I was like "nope, didn't go there. Didn't have an in person interview there. I've never been." I really wish I'd just left him to wonder, but I eventually told him where I was going. Match day, for those of us who scrambled, SUCKS. But it shows a nice level of maturity to go to it. And it is nice to see everyone else so happy. Even if you want to die a little inside. Screams of joy, some tears are not of joy, everyone excited to start their new lives. Not everyone is happy on match day, but it sure feels like it. So forever I'll be the girl who scrambled, just like I'm the girl who failed the boards. No one has to know, but I'll always know. I am happy to be going into psych and into the program I'm going into. It's going to be awesome. But I will likely never fully get over the hurt of not matching. I spiralled into a crazy depression, one I hadn't felt since failing the boards. It sucked. But I lived through it. And I'm moving on. Moral of the story: things suck sometimes, but you get past it and move on. New adventure, about to begin. This hell called medical school is almost over. To all of you getting ready to embark on your fourth year, good luck. I have no useful advice to anyone that I'm willing to share, because I don't want anyone to end up in my position and I feel like my advice would just put you in that position. So do what you think is right and be ready for whatever comes your way.