The day I went to my first medical school interview was a day just like today...a sunny but frigid day in mid-January. I had a three-hour drive ahead of me that I negotiated in my father's dilapidated Corvair...the one with the gaping hole in the floor boards under my feet that allowed me to gaze at the pavement when I grew tired of the scenery. It lent new meaning to the expression "cold feet", as I speculated about what questions I would parry when I met with the Dean of the College of Medicine and his team of decision-makers, fate-sealers, and heart-breakers. Early in the morning, I wrapped my legs in a warm woolen blanket and headed for I-didn't-know-what.
I don't remember much about the rest of the day. I have only a vague recollection of the interviewers, my tour of the hospital, the lecture halls and labs, and the drive home, but one question still haunts me some fifty years later:
"What would you do if a classmate
offered you a joint?"
Wait a minute. Really? Why don't you ask me what books I'm reading. What my favorite subject is. Whether or not I have any experience with illness or with people who are dying. Don't ask me about pot! I don't remember how I answered, but I'm pretty sure that whatever came out sounded awkward, naive, and very uncool. I was sure my application ended up in the trash that day.
The next interview took place in Philadelphia. It turned into a road trip with my BFF, who didn't think it was safe for me travel alone overnight. She insisted on coming with me, so we hopped on a Greyhound bus in Burlington, with a midnight transfer at the terminal in Albany...notorious for sheltering every kind of drunken, drug-addicted, and mentally deranged poor pathetic soul imaginable on cold winter nights. I remember every detail of the Albany bus terminal...but I don't remember one moment of our stay in Philadelphia, and nothing of the interview, or the trip back up North. I do, however, remember what it felt like to stay awake all night before one of the most important interviews of my life. Good practice for all those nights I would eventually spend on-call.
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely
in the memory as the wish to forget it."
~Michel de Montaigne~
My last med school interview also involved an overnight bus ride and another stopover in Albany on my way to NYC. Alone. In Manhattan, I landed in the Port Authority terminal at 6:30 AM, where I was forced to wash up and change in a germ infested public restroom. Where I had to fight my way into a taxi during morning rush hour...against men in three-piece suits carrying alligator briefcases for protection. Where I remember touring the hospital at Flower and Fifth, as if a country girl like myself could possibly survive there.
Looking back, I think each interview was an adventure, each one a test...each one a challenge in its own way. Nerve-racking. Exhausting. Scary...much like the practice of medicine itself. Still, the idea of driving a car with a hole in the floor in the middle of January with just a blanket for warmth still brings a smile to my lips today. I will never forget the characters who entertained me at the Albany bus terminal while I cowered on a bench in disbelief. I still cringe at the thought of washing my face and brushing my teeth in the Port Authority rest room, and I smile to think how I fought my way into the cab that carried me to the hospital at Flower and Fifth.
Proof, I think, that I had what it takes to become a...
"DOCTOR"...
because bad ass miracle worker
is not an official job title."
~unknown~
jan
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