Speed Dating and ... THE MATCH

As a fourth year medical student, there isn't really a lot that you need to do. There are a couple of months you spend at your own medical school (and sometimes other medical schools) basically auditioning for a month in your chosen field. Then you do some electives, ostensibly to help "make you a better intern" but often more to "take something really easy." Then, most of the fall and winter (and spring) is taken up with obsessive worrying about what you're going to do with the rest of your life and where you will be next year. Because, unlike any other career, doctors-to-be get matched with their employer for residency by a computer.

The Match is not quite so online-dating-esque as it just sounded. It is much more like speed dating.

In order to go to residency, medical students apply to multiple residency programs. For competitive specialties (like orthopedics or dermatology) this means applying to upwards of 90+ programs. For most people, the goal is to interview at 10-15 different programs. After all the interviews are over, you rank from #1 to #whatever the programs you interviewed at, and the programs do the same for applicants they interviewed. That's when the computer program synthesizes those two pieces of information (for every applicant and every residency spot in the country), and every medical student gets an envelope at the same time in mid-March that tells you where you are contractually obligated to spend the first year of your residency.

So, how is this like speed dating?

You spend very limited amounts of time getting to know someone (i.e. a program) before setting off to meet the new potential mate. You do this a dozen times, and by the end it's really hard to remember the first few people more than vaguely without confusing them. At the end, you make a ranked list of who would be willing to date, and everyone else does, too. Then the speed dating coordinator tells you who you are going to spend the next 5-7 years of your life is. (And that is how it is NOT like speed dating.)

Now, keep in mind my only reference point for speed dating is from movies, etc., as I have never been speed dating myself. I most often find myself thinking of "The Forty Year Old Virgin." Which program is going to be the one who just got out of prison and is reeking of desperation? Which program's nipple is going to be hanging out and not even notice? Which program is going to be the one who rejected you who you never got over?

And that is how I will get my first adult job as an M.D.