Keys to a Good Residency

At the ACOG conference (yes we actually did go to meetings), program directors of various residency programs gave tips on how to stand out as an applicant. Here are the top five, and I'm not making any of these up for entertainment sake.

1. Find a mentor.
This presents a problem seeing as I have no clue what I want to do. Plus, its not exactly like I'm a baby bird in a Dr. Suess book that can go around asking every moving being in a long white coat, "Will you be my mentor??"

2. Have overcome a debilitating personal struggle.
Examples were given such as "having a dead parent," "losing a limb," or "surviving cancer." I feel rude asking one of my parents to keel over to help my chances of having a good Match Day. And, I've become rather attached to my limbs. But, I do have a habit of not putting on sunscreen so maybe all those years of worshipping the sun gods will pay off on the cancer front in the next year.

3. Be a single parent.
I guess this one is do-able. I'm 24, which means in Mississippi I'm borderline advanced maternal age. Even if I could skip the whole 9 month gestation thing and pop out a kid today, he/she'd still be the one with the "old mom."

4. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
Completely disregarding the fact that I get winded climbing three flights of stairs to my classroom, I'm not exactly sure when I'm expected to squeeze this into my schedule when I'll soon only be getting one day off every seven days. I mean, by my calculations, even if I took a plane to Tanzania, a helicopter to ten feet from the zenith, climbed to the top, slid back down those ten feet, took a helicopter down, and flew back, I'd still be late for rounds the next morning.

5. Be a normal human being.
Now this one I think I could maybe manage. If for a few hours during interviews, I can hide the fact that medical school has brought out my inner control freak, has left me so stressed out I find myself crying when I can't find a parking spot, and has reduced my sense of humor to using such one liners as "I'm so hungry I could go Leish-Neihn on my hand." I am worried however that for some people in my class this one is just as unattainable as the Mount Kilimanjaro thing.