I second what has been said above. DON'T PISS OFF YOUR PROGRAM DIRECTOR! Residency is a 3 year long job interview. You will be scrutinized with a microscope and all your weakness will be gossiped about on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I had similar stats going into residency and ended up matching 9th on my list. I too experienced some shock and disappointment.
I don't make good first impressions, am really nerdy, and am not the kind of guy that you would think "I could totally go out and drink with that guy"...cause I don't drink. I'd like to think that I'm kind of like athletes foot, it takes me a while to grow on you, but once I'm there, I'm hard to get rid of.
I say that because if you had such great stats, you may not have as magnetic a personality as you think, and that is going reflect on your monthly evaluations in residency. You are probably not going to be the resident that everyone loves and idolizes and wants to work with.
At the end of residency, you will be looking for a job and you will depend on honest evaluations from your faculty. They are not going to lie to people. If you are not the hardest worker, they will tell people. If you don't get along with people, they will let them know. If you have a bad attitude at work, that is going to be subtly, if not honestly reported to your future job interviewers.
It is really hard to reverse a first impression. If you show up on day one with any less than an ecstatic attitude, you are screwed. Don't go there (showing up and asking for a way to get transfered to another residency). Take it or leave it. Put on a fake smile and go to work.
I'll never forget a resident director meeting where one of our residents was complaining about the way vacation was being figured out. The resident wanted to have a shift for shift reduction per month for vacation (so, if we were supposed to work 18 shifts that month, and we took 7 days of vacation, they wanted 11 shifts that month). Keep in mind that we got 20 days of vacation a year, which is higher than most residents get. Keep in mind that the internal medicine residents are happy to work 25 days in a row so that they can have 4-5 days off and call that a vacation. The resident said, "I don't think that you are fulfilling your part of the contract that we signed." The attending, who was THE nicest attending we had, and who would bend over backward for anything you wanted, got visibly pissed off and said, "We can always let you out of that contract." Silence, crickets chirping... End of discussion.
Program directors have gone through an insane amount of work to get you there. My program director started the program. When a resident says that they don't want to be at that program when they're accepted, they will feel an intense rage inside that will never quite be assuaged.
