- Joined
- Apr 22, 2007
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I'll try to answer everyone's questions. I'm a U.S. MD, and I went to a good private school, or at least an expensive one. I'm a nontrad student who went back to college for a year of the prereq classes. They went well, but throughout the first two years of med school I barely passed everything. The material all made sense, but I couldn't memorize it fast enough. I think all my life I've been bad at straight memorization, but I was always easily able to compensate for it until med school started. I failed Step I by a point and got a 201 on the retake. That probably would have been all right except that when I took surgery I passed each part of the rotation, including the shelf exam, but the grade was averaged out in such a way that I failed the rotation. I thought that was ridiculous, and the surgeon I worked with the most was absolutely livid that my school would do this, especially because he knew I really was working hard and helping the team out a lot, but what could I do? I retook the surgery rotation at a different site, didn't do anything different and this time I passed with no problems. Between taking extra time for Step I and getting failed in surgery, I was left with no time in third year for electives, away rotations or a sub-i before interview season. I knew that would never work, so I delayed graduating by a year. I got a 228 on Step 2. A big improvement, but still not all that great.
Oddly enough, I did great on my anesthesiology rotations. I liked the work, and the residents loved that I set up their rooms for them each morning and generally tried to be as helpful as I could throughout the day. I had some excellent away rotations and got plenty of LORs. Of course, none of that mattered when interview season came around. With all those red flags on my application I ended up with three interviews, two of which were from places I'd worked at and may have been courtesy interviews. I didn't match and didn't even get a phone call in SOAP. I can't say I was surprised to go unmatched. Programs had their choice of plenty of Caribbean students with better Step scores than me to choose from.
It is true that I could try to do a prelim year, FM or IM, but I'm not confident in my odds of success. I applied to quite a few medicine and surgery prelim years and never got an interview from them. I don't much like IM and I seriously doubt I'd be any good at it. I had a good FM rotation and might be able to match into that, but I just can't get myself excited about the possibility of doing well patient exams and treating the flu for the next twenty years. FM residency followed by anesthesiology residency, for a total of 6-7 years? No thanks. Medical school has been nothing but failure, disappointment and heartache. I didn't get to celebrate Match Day with my class, I didn't get to celebrate Match Day when I should have matched, I've got a useless diploma and in a few weeks I won't be celebrating graduation. I've had enough. I can be happier making slightly less money doing something else.
I disagree completely with your decision to not try for Family Medicine Spot. That's a fairly easy residency to complete and you would be a real Physician. I like your plan to renovate houses but why not do both? FP and Contractor work would make for a nice, long career.
After you FM/FP Residency there is Public Health, Teaching at the college or Med School level all while keeping the renovation projects humming.
The time has come to bury your pride and take what you can get.