Hi mlkmnsgrl. Where is your husband now? Any advice for the match? Where did he end up doing his 2 year service? I read through the 2015 posts and they were very informative....wish I had read them before I applied and interviewed lol. I saw you have 3 kids. If you don't mind sharing, was your husband gone a lot during those 2 years?
He's a professor at his alma mater, which is pretty much the only place that ever could have tempted him away from NIOSH, which is where he matched and where we planned to stay after his EIS years. NIOSH was the perfect fit for him, and we liked Cincinnati, but occupational epi is definitely different than most of the match options laid before you. As far as travel, it was the tail end of Ebola and then Zika during his time, but the outbreak he deployed to was histoplasmosis in Dominican Republic. Other than that his travel was all from presentations, site inspections related to his NIOSH research, and Commissioned Corps OBC. It was definitely more travel than we were used to, but never more than 3 weeks, and that long was rare. For the training weeks in Atlanta, we sublet an apartment and were all there together. We would also typically go along for EIS conference and that type of thing. He'd be in meetings all day and I'd take the kids to the zoo or whatever. But he hates travel and I hate single parenting, so that worked for us, lol.
I know you're past this stage, but for those reading in future: The main things he learned as we did the application process, including a Sencer Scholar visit the year before, were flexibility (i.e., don't set your heart on Zoonotic) and making sure you clearly communicate what doing EIS will add to your career. They hate it if you just say you want to work for CDC and this is your in. He had some very specific talking points prepared for interviews, worked hard to make contacts in every area/state he felt would fit his goals and our family (he's not an infectious guy, so this was easy for him because the places of interest were typically NOT those in-demand spots everyone fights for), and he asked a ton of questions to be sure he was very clear how the match process works. Maybe it's changed, but at that point it kinda all came down to how the scores added up and once he was certain he wanted NIOSH, he went through every possible preference scoring scenario to be sure it would add up right. I don't remember the other programs that tried to recruit him. EIS was a great experience. It was also chaotic (the Corps really does things in backwards ways, and the EIS office was...uneven), there was hoop-jumping galore, and it was very political. We were glad to be up in Cincinnati away from some of that Atlanta drama. Ultimately, it was so worthwhile, he benefited greatly and encourages many of his students to work toward EIS. The benefits far outweigh the bureaucracy. I wish you all great experiences and good fit matches! If it's not a good fit--you can learn from anything for 2 years and still come away better than you were!
