Hello all! I am hopping back on here to thank you/respond to some of your comments and especially for posterity as future people may have this same question. This will probably be a very long post! First I will respond to some comments and then share what happened. I apologize for not responding to all of your comments in a timely manner...I got very overwhelmed during the interview process, and the ranking process, and I just needed time to cope a bit. But I did read and appreciate your messages!
Yes, this ended up being my first line of action. I asked about how faculty/supervisors had dealt with "unexpected" things like family members being sick with COVID or other problems, etc. There was basically a relevant story at every site, and if they hadn't mentioned it by then usually at this point any interns with kids would identify themselves. In those cases, I wrote down the contact info for the parenting intern (if available). Then, if I was very interested in the site but unsure of my reading of it, I followed up later with questions.
@dcpsychdoc I assume this varies greatly by site. I'm not sure what kind of site you are at but it might be helpful to future applicants to understand what sort of funding stream this would be relevant to? I didn't get the impression at any of the sites I interviewed at (VAs and AMCs) that this would be relevant but I can imagine how it would be in other types of sites or even just different AMCs.
This was definitely a big concern. I made sure to understand any timing restrictions/intern limits for all rotations I was interested in at all sites. I also considered whether if I was blocked from doing certain rotations this would cause me to not want a particular site. Really important point!
I believe while it is less than ideal, my perspective is a reflection of reality. Of course most people would prefer to be at a site that would be fully supportive of them. However if people who were routinely discriminated against avoided jobs that aren't fully supportive of them, no systemic change would be made. I don't think anyone should be forced to be in a situation that isn't supportive, but I also think it's quite alright to choose to be (or risk being) the squeaky wheel if that will get you where you want to go.
Regarding potential complications with pregnancy - I don't think this is significantly different than complications with life. As others pointed out in the thread, illness, accidents, unanticipated crises come up and have to be dealt with. If God forbid something happens with my baby I will probably have bigger fish to fry than whether my site was excited about my baby or not.
Yes. As I mentioned in my original post, I'm sure it is at least inconvenient for most sites to deal with; but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't work as a field to make it a bit easier for parents and people with other caregiving or medical needs.
I really appreciate you sharing your experience.
@Action_Potential could you expand on this for future readers? Are you a TD and saying that would you break a contract after a match if the intern had to start late for childbirth (or maybe other reasons)? I didn't think this was allowed but I did want to know if it could happen and it would be very helpful to know that it can.
Wow! I can't even imagine how difficult this would be to keep secret. Thanks for sharing your experiences with me!
This is a very balanced perspective and I definitely took this into consideration and was a big criteria I considered for making my decisions. I almost disclosed to one program for this reason, and maybe I should have as it could have influenced my decision, but I wanted to rank it high enough that I was unwilling to do it in the end.
So here's what I did.
During the interview process:
- Wherever possible if there was a current intern with kids I either took down their contact info if it was freely given or asked for their email address in case I had follow up questions. Basically at all the sites the parents were very understanding and forthcoming and seemed like they would be especially trustworthy to ask questions like these. (Obviously YMMV.) For the places I wanted to rank highly but had a hard time reading the impact of starting late, I reached out to these parents and asked for short phone follow up. All of them happily agreed to chat and all of them were very supportive in giving their impressions and advice. Some of them offered to ask questions to HR on my behalf or seek out additional info for me anonymously. Very generous.
- I also made sure I was very clear at each site how rotations were assigned/any restrictions related to timing/any funny aspects of the process. The most worrisome sites to me were those where interns had to figure out the rotations amongst themselves during the first couple of weeks of orientation. This system seemed to be the riskiest to participate in because who knows if the TD would be willing to help out on my behalf or if I would be left with the dregs so to speak.
During the ranking process:
- As many people do, I made a bunch of categories for different aspects of each site (e.g., location, rotation fit, supervisor quality, etc. and then one of those was "inconvenience of starting late"). In this category I factored in the actual official start date (so a start date of September was not at all inconvenient and a start date of June was very much inconvenient), what I understood about their flexibility from previous interns, the way they assigned rotations (so the place where I would be the only intern on a track was more favorable than a place where there were few options and no guarantees), etc.
- I gave each category weights and calculated theoretical rank order lists both with and without this consideration just to understand how it fit in. For me personally, including this factor shuffled around the order of the top half and bottom half of the list but it was not dramatic. Turns out I was not willing to trade all that much program fit for "inconvenience of late start."
- I also factored in social support in each of the locations, which was very hard for me because I have always been very comfortable being independent, going wherever, etc. (Similarly in the past I would've been more comfortable ranking a 50 hour site highly if it felt like the best match otherwise, but I really deducted points for that given an infant waiting at home.) This was actually the hardest part of the process because I really did not want to compromise on my preferred locations just because I didn't know anyone in town (besides my partner who is coming with). But, I did allow this to sway my rankings. Of course we'll never know about the alternative but I'm hoping I'll be glad about the rank list I made.
- In the end, my bottom group of sites would have probably been my bottom ranks no matter what, for reasons unrelated to timing -- very favorable timing did not move them up enough. The top sites however did change from what they would have been. I ended up ranking the more "exciting" fits that had less guarantee of desired rotations and earlier start dates in positions 3 and 4. I ranked the sites that were strong (if not perfect) fits in 1 and 2: for these I was extremely confident they would accommodate me (based on flexible program structure/many rotations of interest/late start date/previous intern experience) and I knew I would have more social support in these cities. I'm sure I exposed my baby to too many stress hormones during this decision-making process! Hopefully baby will be OK anyway. The 3 and 4 choices were definitely more risky, but I was more willing to take the risk of being matched at these programs than I was willing to rank places I was not so excited about higher. Worth mentioning, I thought the biggest risk was likely to be getting less than ideal rotations, but still decent ones. So not terrible risk.
And here's what happened.
I ended up matching with one of the top 2 sites. Besides being happy to match, I was partially sad because a piece of me wanted the "safe" options to pass me up so I could have one of my "exciting" options. (Sorry if that sounds bratty! I realize this is a privileged perspective.) The site I matched with has a very early start date, but I had heard from current interns the program had dealt with a similar situation in the past so I felt it was still safe. After match day I wrote a brief and polite letter to the TD explaining the situation. They wrote back a very supportive email and we simply collaborated to determine a new planned start date. I truly think there are no hard feelings at all, and the TD has indicated this should not impact my rotations or anything else really. I decided to start before Sep 1 so I can hopefully not be cut off from too many post-docs with Sep start dates. It's not as long as I would like for parental leave but it seems like the best compromise.
In the end, although I had some disappointment not matching at what I would have found more exciting, I tried to keep in mind that there is always post-doc and beyond for more adventurous options, that I will hopefully enjoy having the social support, and also, that a lot of my "top" sites didn't even interview me in the first place, so why be so attached to any one site! Also, I'm trying to remember that my prioritizes are likely to shift when I'm responsible for this tiny human 24/7. I feel very lucky with how things turned out and I feel confident that this match will result in a positive internship experience. I will definitely update this post if I am wrong about that though!
Future readers: If you read this far, you may very well be in my shoes. Feel free to PM me as needed! If I can help at all I certainly will, and I wish you the best. Once again thank you to everyone who took time to respond to this thread!
