happiness is...

- 16 weeks until graduation
- 15 weeks until Cummington/Mass Sheep and Wool
- 1 week until SPA
- less than a day until the residency match
- the "Wicked" Original Broadway Cast Soundtrack
- "Enslaved By Ducks" by Bob Tarte

Craziness is abound in the life of this knitting med student - tomorrow I find out where I'll do my post-graduation training and later this week other things will start to solidify. The rotation I had scheduled to take place next month fell through due to paperwork issues but with any luck something else will fall into place.

Some noticed that my "match" is early - there are two seperate matches for residency that I could have been a part of (actually there are several matches - one for the military and a few for subspecialties); the osteopathic students have the option to match in either the osteopathic match (do) or the allopathic match (md). All of the programs I considered have spots "open" in both matches so I chose to be a part of the earlier (DO) match. (The allopathic match is just over a month from now.)

The whole match process sounds more complicated than it is - here's a primer: The summer before a med student's fourth year the electronic residency application process opens for registrations. The application is complex and takes time to fill in and go over. Once everything from the student and school is complete it can be "sent" to the programs that a student chooses.
The programs review the applications (all processed electronically) and choose who they are interested in interviewing. Interviews are done during the fall and winter and are by "invite" only; the programs that a student is invited to are generally the program that they'll consider when it comes time to "rank."

Ranking is something that both the program and student do - the lists are submitted via another electronic process and have to be "certified" (with a supersecret password that is mailed out just before the process starts). Students rank the programs with the goal of being chosen by their top program - it can be a balancing act of location,location,location vs. the training and other aspects of "higher" med education. At the same time the programs are ranking the students that they are most interested in, playing a game of "how many to rank" vs. "who is ranked where (high on the list or low on the list?)." The student's goal is to match with one of the programs on their rank list; the program's goal is to fill their spots with students that they are interested in.

Once the lists are "done" (ie once the deadline has come and gone) a computer program starts sorting the lists. There are plenty of sites out there that can better explain the whole process of how the lists are arranged but the jist is that the student's choices are held above the program's choices and a computer does the lists only because it would take people much longer to do all of the paperwork.

If a student doesn't match with a program they fall into the "scramble" category - they then do the whole apply/interview/wait to be accepted process in an accellerated fashion and match with programs that have empty spots.

The DO match doesn't have the same sort of scramble period that the MD match does, so at this point I don't know anything "official" yet. I have a hunch that I won't have to scramble, but I won't know anything for sure until tomorrow after noon, eastern standard time.

(sufice to say I've been fairly nonproductive this weekend and any knitting that was done has since been ripped due to gauge issues or pattern mistakes. Reading has been a much better way to pass the time!)

in other news: while at MamaCate's my laptop fell prey to a single well intentioned drop of coffee that took advantage of gravity after I opened my computer up. The drop (half a drop, really) took up residence in the space just behind the first layer of my screen and after settling in it decided that the single line of pixels it had intially messed up wasn't enough - and so my entire screen went black.

I still haven't gotten anything off of that computer, but am now working on a "new 'reconditioned'" laptop that, tonight (for the first time and thanks to an external wireless adapter) decided to connect to the internet. The way technology and I have been (not) getting along, its no wonder that my palm pilot has been acting up and my camera cords went missing. At some point it'll all be in the same place at the same time (and, perhaps working?) and then I'll share pictures of what is on my needles.

(because by then I'll have things to take pictures of. For my own safety I'm going to avoid the needles for the next 14+ hours.)