so i had my interview yesterday. i'm still in N.O. for anyone who anxiously wants to know how the interview went, it went well. very well. but i'm not there yet. i'm just gonna start at square one cuz i've got a lot to tell.
so i got to Deming sunday night. for those of you that don't know, deming is where a lot of M1s live. it is about 3 blocks from the old Tulane Medical School building (which is across the street from charity) and about 5 blocks from the new medical school building (which is DIRECTLY across the street from the superdome, as you can see:
the new med school building is the latticed looking black building on the right and you can see the superdome barely on the left. back to deming. for anybody who is staying here when they come to interview heed my warning: there is NOTHING inside your dorm room. keep that in mind, this is not a hotel, it is an empty dorm room. bring towels, soap, shampoo, toilet paper, etc...all that they really provide is a bed with sheets and if you're lucky a pillow (the other girl that stayed here didn't get one)...and i didn't have a shower curtain, and still don't actually. i called bill to ask him to get me one and never heard back so i've been showering without it. i'll be sure to get him back as i'm leaving by leaving the room in a a horrific mess. nonetheless, deming is in an awesome location. bill says that a lot of students move out for their second year, only to return a year later because it is so close to University hospital and Charity (but considering neither of those hospitals are operating who knows what the case will be in 2 years). It's about a 10 minute walk to the French quarter and 2 blocks away from Canal Street. Either way though, I wouldn't be able to justify NOT living in the french quarter for at least a year or two if I come here. it's a dope place, great food, great feel etc. but i'll get back to that.
interview day: i was suprisingly not nervous in the morning despite it being my first interview. however, my heart rate during the elevator ride up probably escalated from 70 bpm to over 200. easily. they put us in a room and surprisingly there were 2 M4s there to answer questions for us etc. I was surprised by how UN-enthusiastic these two were, considering the reputation of Tulane students being so outgoing and chill. nonetheless, they answered all of our questions and were good sports. one of them was back in new orleans to take some of his public health electives (the school of public health is back open), and one was down here for...i forget what. They informed me that about 1/3 of each class pursues an MD/MPH and that once you're accepted into the MD program you're automatically accepted into the joint program, if you so desire. I wasn't unaware of either of these facts. so basically we just chit-chatted for about an hour til Dr. Beckman came in around 9 and just took over. she is quite a prescense. a delightful lady. she asked if anyone had read the times-picayune that morning (i was the only one that had) about how it was official that Charity was going to be closed down. So we got to talking about what's in store for the future in terms of hospitals etc. the truth is, they are pretty uncertain about what things are going to be like in the next few months, but are very optimistic. nonetheless, oschner is definitely back up and running and she mentioned 2 or 3 more, and she said that the University hospital should be reopened by April.
here are pictures of charity hospital, the old medical school building, and university hospital in that order (they are all across the street from eachother)
as for the actual interviews, they were as chill as i could possibly imagine. I had my first with Dr. Don, who is pretty much the coolest guy ever, and my second with Dr. Beckman, who as we all know is a sweetheart. The first 10 minutes of my interview with Dr. Don was all me asking questions and just chatting him up, asking him about his past and where he lives etc. if i could give you any advice it would be to come prepared with LOADS of questions. within no time i had him busting up laughing and telling stories about mardi gras and letting me know where the 10 cent margaritas are. the only questions he made sure to ask me were: what my gpa and mcat were, what my parents do, and what kind of volunteer work i've done. oh, and california people beware, BOTH my interviewers kind of insinuated that i would get in and go to a UC which is why they are usually hesitant to accept Cali kids. So i went out of my way to tell them that i only applied to 2 UCs, don't have interviews at either and that I'm in no way desperate to stay in Cali (once i told them that my brother got into a UC but chose to go elsewhere, they seemed kind of relieved). my time with Dr. Don seemed to pass in like 3 minutes eventhough it was 30. we were both laughing most of the time. at the end of it he told me that he was gonna request that I get accepted and gave me his cell phone number and insisted that i call him in these next few days if i need anything. all in all, he is one of the most affable, sincere, genuine people i've met.
i had a half hour break til my 2nd interview with Dr. Beckman. i made a new friend out of one of the other interviewees who is a New Orleans native and we ended up hanging out all day after the interview (btw, there was another girl i interviewed with who was BANGIN...she's from chicago and i got her number and she told me to call her when i come up for my RFU interview, where she is already holding an acceptance). besides the point. So, from the seat in Dr. Beckman's office you can see Charity hospital, which inevitably gets you started on a trail of question-asking. we actually started out talking about how the admissions process is going (because she had stacks of applications ALL over her office). she was pretty funny about it all, pointing to stacks and saying "those are the rejections", "those are the 'to be interviewed'" and "i have no idea what's going on with these". She also told me that they're only interviewing through February and only interviewing half as many people as they normally do (so about 500). She also mentioned how they're interviewing a lot of people from Louisiana and its surrounding states for obvious reasons (2 out of the 5 of us were FROM new orleans, and a third went to school at emory). anyway, that interview went very smoothly too, all she really asked was "is tulane really at the top of your list" which was very easy for me to answer and "what do you like to do outside of class" at which point i told her about this documentary i shot with my friends about the World Beard and Mustache Competition, at which point she told me that her son went to USC and all his friends made him act in their indie movies etc... and we talked about her kids etc. it was all as conversational as i could've possibly imagined. I kinda went out of my way to tell her about specific things i want to do to help out in the community (i.e. volunteering at elementary schools etc.) and she seemed to like that. i also brought up dr. cowen's speech that anon-y-mouse (you are THe MAN) posted and she hadn't even heard it and i told her about that and she asked me to email it to her. yadda yadda yadda. she was very nice at the end saying she wished we had more time (there was another interviewer slot right after me) but that her and Dr. Don usually have similar feelings about people they interview.
so, basically i was done with interviews at 1030 and there was really nothing to do. eventually they gave us lunch at around 11, we kept talking with the M4s and at around 1130 Dr. Anderson (a histo professor and interviewer) joined us followed by Dr. Don. I noticed a lot of the other interviewers got all uptight and froze up just being in these people's presence, but i played it cool and in no time I had Dr. Don and Anderson joking around. I've found that the easiest thing to do is just always put the spotlight on THEM, rather than it being on you. people get bored when you just sit there and talk about yourself. and besides, they've lived longer and have funny stories to tell too. while we were eating lunch the ENT residency coordinator stopped by and talked to us for a while. he was a funny guy and very laid back. he echoed dr. cowen's sentiments about how residencies that get applicants from Tulane are definitely gonna want to take a second look, considering we'd be comin from New Orleans.
they weren't able to give us a tour of anything, so we were out by noon. the new med school building is under construction (you could tell that even the administration floor was just BARELY finished) and the old med school building is still closed for inspections. so that was kind of a bummer but at least we got to see where everything is.
