- Joined
- Jul 23, 2004
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- Attending Physician
Now that I've hit SEND in ERAS and am now doing the anxious thumb-twiddling, I just wanted to say "thank you" to the psychiatry community on SDN.
I used SDN quite a bit when preparing to apply to medical school, and it was often a mixed bag. The Pre-Allopathic forums bred a lot of fear, panic and paranoia. Luckily, there was enough good information buried there to make it worth sorting the wheat from the chaff.
I also used SDN in preparing for my Step I and Step II. This had a lot of the same effect. Those forums skewed towards, "If I don't get 250 it means I've failed!" But again, there were nuggets to be found.
When I was choosing a specialty, I turned to the Psychiatry forums and found it was a great ambassador to a field that sometimes was in need of statesmanship. For many of us, psychiatry wasn't even on the radar when we entered medical school and the site did a lot to help inspire interest in the specialty in the pre-clinical years and primed me to what turned out to be a field that was a great fit during third year.
Lastly, when I made the decision to apply to psychiatry, I did exhaustive searches of this site and made some embarrassingly detailed spreadsheets. I was able to winnow down the 185 odd programs into geographical areas I wanted to live, then research individual programs. I walked away with information about research strengths, faculty background, call schedules, areas of emphasis, areas of improvement, facilities, lifestyle, resident culture, and community emphasis. This helped me decide which programs were right for me and make an educated application list and, after looking over program websites, feel prepared as I (hopefully) schedule some interviews.
So coming from someone too early in his career to be much of contributor on this forum, I just wanted to say "thanks" for all those veterans here who take the time to clarify things about the field and what it means to practice psychiatry in residency and beyond. And thanks for consistently reassuring we applicants that a great education is to be had in lesser known programs, less popular locales, and in community programs without "University of" in the title. I know it definitely allowed me to apply intelligently to programs that I might have overlooked otherwise.
Best of luck to all those applying. I look forward to soon being more of a contributor and hopefully helping provide some service like many of you have for those of us medical students. Take care…
I used SDN quite a bit when preparing to apply to medical school, and it was often a mixed bag. The Pre-Allopathic forums bred a lot of fear, panic and paranoia. Luckily, there was enough good information buried there to make it worth sorting the wheat from the chaff.
I also used SDN in preparing for my Step I and Step II. This had a lot of the same effect. Those forums skewed towards, "If I don't get 250 it means I've failed!" But again, there were nuggets to be found.
When I was choosing a specialty, I turned to the Psychiatry forums and found it was a great ambassador to a field that sometimes was in need of statesmanship. For many of us, psychiatry wasn't even on the radar when we entered medical school and the site did a lot to help inspire interest in the specialty in the pre-clinical years and primed me to what turned out to be a field that was a great fit during third year.
Lastly, when I made the decision to apply to psychiatry, I did exhaustive searches of this site and made some embarrassingly detailed spreadsheets. I was able to winnow down the 185 odd programs into geographical areas I wanted to live, then research individual programs. I walked away with information about research strengths, faculty background, call schedules, areas of emphasis, areas of improvement, facilities, lifestyle, resident culture, and community emphasis. This helped me decide which programs were right for me and make an educated application list and, after looking over program websites, feel prepared as I (hopefully) schedule some interviews.
So coming from someone too early in his career to be much of contributor on this forum, I just wanted to say "thanks" for all those veterans here who take the time to clarify things about the field and what it means to practice psychiatry in residency and beyond. And thanks for consistently reassuring we applicants that a great education is to be had in lesser known programs, less popular locales, and in community programs without "University of" in the title. I know it definitely allowed me to apply intelligently to programs that I might have overlooked otherwise.
Best of luck to all those applying. I look forward to soon being more of a contributor and hopefully helping provide some service like many of you have for those of us medical students. Take care…
