Done with interviews!

I can’t believe it – I’m done with interviews! It is a huge relief and feels wonderful. I’ll share with you my synopsis of the last 3 months, leaving the information about the actual programs out, just so I don’t play all my cards yet. What I can share, however, is what the interview days were like from a mostly food perspective. That’s the most important part after all, right?

Date: October 16, 2008
Program: Jersey Shore Medical Center
Social event: None
Breakfast: A platter of pastries and plenty of coffee and tea
Lunch: Subs and Snapple – the subs were notable for being delicious, Jersey-Italian-style subs, with tons of oregano, oil and vinegar and thinly sliced deli meats. Often imitated (especially by the Penn Station Subs chains in Louisville), but nothing beats an authentic one. I also remember eating a really delicious brownie.
Where I stayed: With Eric in Ocean City, NJ
How I got there: US Air to Philly, rental car
Other notable events: I forgot to bring my EZ Pass on this trip, and was using a rental car, so I had to grab a handful of change from the Ocean City house in order to navigate the Garden State Parkway. It was here that I met Lisa, who goes to Penn State.
Cost of interview: $349, including $75 to rent a car from Cincinnati to Louisville because I misread my flight confirmation, missed my flight from Philadelphia back to Louisville, and flew standby to Cincy instead. Stupid mistake.
*Note: the reported cost of these interviews does not include eating during the trip, since I didn’t feel like keeping receipts from all the random airport places I got food from. It also, for the most part, doesn’t include SEPTA (Philly) or Metro (DC) tickets, and doesn’t include tolls.

Date: October 23, 2008
Program: Washington Hospital Center
Social event: I missed the pre-interview dinner because my sister, who was picking me up from BWI, and I completely missed each other at the airport. She was waiting inside at baggage claim, and I walked out to the sidewalk. She left her phone in her car, and I called her for 45 minutes straight frantically, wondering why she wasn’t answering. By the time she realized she didn’t have her phone, went back to the car and got it, found me, and we reached DC, I had missed the entire dinner. I was worried because it was the first one I had had, I had been told how important they were from my point of view, and how important they might be from the program’s point of view, but it all turned out OK.
Breakfast: Breakfast the next morning was bagels and fruit and coffee and juice.
Lunch: Lunch was amazing – salad, baked chicken breasts, roasted potatoes, and some amazing desserts. I definitely stuffed myself that day.
Where I stayed: I stayed with my sister in her College Park house for this interview, and slept on a couch in the basement curled hesitantly on a college house basement couch amid fears of spickets (officially called camel crickets, but we call them spider+cricket=spickets in our house) jumping on me in the middle of the night.
How I got there: Southwest to BWI; Metro from College Park to the hospital
Other notable events: After the interview, I took the metro back to College Park and realized, after taking Shuttle UM to the campus, that I had left my cell phone on the metro. It was an adventure getting it back, but miraculously, I got it back! At this interview I met Gayatri, who goes to Temple, and Ananda, who goes to University of Vermont.
Cost of interview: $213 plus minor cost of Metro card

Date: October 31, 2008
Program: Albert Einstein, Philadelphia
Social event: None
Breakfast: Breakfast was unmemorable, but probably coffee and pastries again.
Lunch: Lunch was pretty unremarkable as well – some sort of sandwiches, I presume. I remember eating something that I thought was prepared weirdly or badly… like chicken salad that needed seasoning or something like that.
Where I stayed: At my friend Marjorie’s apartment in Philadelphia. She gave me a copy of her key on long-term loan since I would be staying at her place so often over the ensuing months.
How I got there: Continental to Philly
Other notable events: I was in Philly on the day of the World Series parade, but unfortunately couldn’t really attend – as soon as I was done with the interview, it was time to make my way to the airport, and in all of the parade madness, I almost didn’t make it. At Einstein I met Beth, from Thomas Jefferson, and we discovered that we would be interviewing at Cooper together the following week.
Cost of interview: $235

Date: November 6, 2008
Program: University of Louisville
Social event: The interview dinner was held that night, for both my group and the next day’s group. Dinner was pasta catered from somewhere local, bottles of wine, and a cooler of beer and sodas held at a resident’s house. It was a fun event and a nice, casual vibe. Spouses and significant others were expressly invited, but since Eric was in NJ, he didn’t come.
Breakfast: None; this was an afternoon interview, starting at 11:30 am.
Lunch: Lunch was sandwiches, a large bowl of kettle-cooked chips, and cookies. The sodas were all of the diet variety, and the iced tea was Nestea, which I don’t like, so I had bottled water. I hate diet soda. Also of note, the lunch was sponsored by a local bank, and it was made very clear that the lunch was sponsored, which I found odd. Can’t the department afford to pay for lunch for its interviewees?
Where I stayed: My own apartment
How I got there: Walked.
Other notable events: Along those financial lines, parking for the day was not reimbursed, not that it mattered to me personally, since I just walked to school like I normally do. But still, I found it really annoying, and thought it was a poor reflection of the financial stability of the department. At this interview I met Welles, who also goes to Jefferson and knows Beth.
Cost of interview: $0

Date: November 7, 2008
Program: UMDNJ – Cooper University Hospital, Camden
Social event: The social event was held that same evening at Bahama Breeze at the Cherry Hill Mall. Eric joined us for the social (again, spouses and significant others had been specifically invited), where everyone got two drink tickets for beer or wine, and the servers brought out tons of orders of appetizers, including quesadillas, jerk chicken wings, coconut shrimp, flatbread pizzas, and spinach dip.
Breakfast: This was another afternoon interview.
Lunch: Lunch was lasagna, a chicken-and-broccoli pasta dish, and buffalo wings (a weird addition) with garlic breadsticks and salad. Notably, the plates were paper, which meant all the pasta sauce leaked through onto the tables, and there weren’t enough serving utensils for the food. Also, it’s difficult to eat buffalo wings neatly while wearing an interview suit.
Where I stayed: Early the morning of Nov. 7 I flew Continental to Philadelphia, was picked up at the airport by Eric, and we drove to the hotel I had Pricelined for the night before. He stayed at the hotel the night before just for fun since I had booked it, and I got there with just enough time before checkout to take a shower and get ready for the interview. At the last minute, we decided I would “accidentally miss” my flight that night and we would Priceline another hotel, which was a great decision.
How I got there: Continental to Philadelphia
Other notable events: The first hotel I Pricelined was a Hyatt Place, and it seemed pretty nice – the shower was good, anyway. The night of the interview, we Pricelined a Wingate by Wyndham, which was comparable to the Hyatt Place but with better toiletries. Of note, they provided robes in the bathroom, so we pretended we were in a luxury spa and wore robes all night. I had a little bit of trouble getting my flight rebooked for the next day, but in the end I did it without any fees. I saw my new friend Beth from Jefferson and Gayatri from Temple again, and met another girl who goes to Temple (we’ll refer to her as Temple #2 because I can’t remember her name). Gayatri and I ended up coordinating a switch of our Jefferson interviews in December, which worked out perfectly for both of us.
Cost of interview: $255

Date: November 14, 2008
Program: University of Maryland
Social event: Was held at Lucy’s Irish Pub in Baltimore. The pub food was pretty good, your standard wings, spinach dip, etc. In typical fashion, it was appetizers-only, even though it was in the middle of the dinner hour.
Breakfast: Breakfast the next morning was more pastries and coffee
Lunch: Lunch was sandwiches and cookies. I remember the desks we were eating at (old-school elementary school-type desks, where the desk portion swings up to let you get in and out of the chair) were slanted, so you couldn’t put your drink on the desk lest it slide toward you and spill. I also remember I stole an extra Coke for the road before leaving.
Where I stayed: For this interview, I stayed at my friend Paula’s house near Arundel Mills (she’s a resident at UMD), and we went out that night to celebrate her sister’s birthday with Chinese food and bowling.
How I got there: Southwest to BWI, rental car to the interview
Other notable events: This interview was on a Friday, and I flew into BWI on Thursday. On Wednesday I was on call on pediatric surgery and met a visiting fourth medical student from North Carolina who was rotating with the pediatric and adolescent gynecologist (which I’m going to do in February). We got to talking, and it turned out she was also interviewing at Maryland on Friday, and we were taking the same Southwest flight the next day! What a small world. We shared the experience of having our plane in Louisville develop mechanical problems, at which point the Southwest crew deplaned us and reboarded us on the next available plane extremely smoothly and easily. Have I mentioned yet that I love Southwest? At the pre-interview dinner, I saw Beth again unexpectedly – we interviewed together 3 Fridays in a row! I also saw Temple girl #2 at this interview.
Cost of interview: $364

Date: November 21, 2008
Program: UMDNJ – Robert Wood Johnson, New Brunswick
Social event: The pre-interview dinner was at an intern’s apartment, and they brought in lasagna and delicious gourmet pizza and Yellow Tail wine.
Breakfast: I had breakfast at the hotel (oatmeal, hardboiled egg, fresh orange juice, and coffee) just in case the interview breakfast wasn’t very good (I’m not a pastry person, really), and it was a good thing, because breakfast was scrambled eggs and pancakes. Definitely not what I want to be eating before an interview – the risk of ketchup and syrup getting all over me is just too big!
Lunch: Lunch was great – pasta, chicken, antipasta, and baked desserts. I definitely like north and central Jersey for the Italian-American cooking.
Where I stayed: I Pricelined a room at the Staybridge Suites, which is an extended-stay place, and it was really nice.
How I got there: US Air to Philly, rental car to New Brunswick
Other notable events: On the way back to Philly, I took a detour and picked up Hoagie Haven in Princeton. YUM. It’s been so long since I’ve had the pleasure of devouring a Hoagie Haven chicken parm, and they had avgolemono soup to boot. I met Eric and his mom in Exton and we ordered Rocco’s pizza and went to Quizzo in Phoenixville, where we got second place, which is a $50 gift certificate (we often get first place, which is $100 cash).
Cost of interview: $339

That was the first seven interviews, over the course of six weeks. One interview a week for six weeks (plus the extra thrown in on week 4) was very tiring. For my first interview, I was coming off of night float, and that was my first day back on a daytime schedule in a month, which made the interview pretty exhausting. For the rest of the interviews in October and November, I was on pediatric surgery and, in order to comply with my attendance requirements, would take call two days before an interview, stay up all night, then fly to the pre-interview event on my post-call day and try to sleep on the plane. It was quite exhausting. After Robert Wood Johnson, I got a week off for Thanksgiving, and Eric came to visit me in Louisville. After Thanksgiving, it started back up again, with even more intensity…