How I’m Choosing My Residency

Not the best decision-maker on the planet? I have a wonderful solution for you–archery*! This is how I’m choosing my residency.

Back in the days of Davis, I used to take and/or sneak into Jenn’s archery class in the fall and spring. (The sneaking was only because I had a class that cut into half of it, so I’d bike all over campus and run into my classes with my bow and arrows until I made it to her class in late-mornings. I’m sure my professors loved me. <3 )

Her classes were super fun–we had a foggy morning where we lined up and advanced in rows like militia forces from long ago, and other times, we’d shoot down balloons!

As a 4th-year medical student, I’m putting together my match list for residency programs right now, but since I so heavily “pre-screened” the places I applied to and have become so adaptable, I was liking pretty much every program that I interviewed at a whole lot–a good problem to have since it means I’ll be happy at a bunch of different places, but it made life difficult in terms of coming up with a list.

I was about 33% of the way through my interviews when I came up with this:

In fact, Dave was so supportive that he came up with an entire game plan! Basing my life decisions off the first ones I hit was a little too scary, so he proposed that we randomly assign a number to each program and then set up balloon and post-it tab targets.

This was our scoring system:

 

(Dave’s points were halved since this is technically my life decision to make, but he was free to attempt to alter the course of my future if he so chose to.)

After this in-depth discussion, we went to Target to pick up supplies!

Our original plan was to have 5 balloon targets for each program, but as the prep process continued, we decided that 60 balloons might be a little too ambitious, especially because we were starting to drown in balloons (the front of the car could only hold so much!). We eventually decided to go for 3 targets each, and we’d refill as necessary.

As the car filled up, we started getting some reallyyyyy weird looks from passersby.

After blowing up all them balloons, we came upon the realization that balloon transportation might make life a little difficult. What were we thinking!? (In our defense, it was drizzling/slightly rainy outside, which is why we didn’t bring them all onto the field to blow up.)

Thankfully, Dave is an engineer, so he came up with this genius idea!

Golden Gate Park is our favorite place to go shoot because they have targets that are already set up, and it’s free of charge! You just need your own equipment and you can go to town!

This was the first target we set up! 12 balloons and 12 tabs so that it’d be equal opportunity for all the programs I was considering!

Dave and I are deciding my future through #archery. #medschoollife #medschool #medstudent #residency #goldengatepark #sanfrancisco

A photo posted by Farrah @ fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Jan 16, 2016 at 3:27pm PST

As time went on, we decided to stuff em’ all closer together and see what would happen. (We were also getting hungry, so we wanted to finish after another 1-2 rounds.)

*Just in case you’re wondering, this was all in good fun. I am not haphazardly leaving my next 3 years up to my archery skills, especially since it’s been 3 years since either of us had actually gone shooting.

It was a super fun excuse to get together, and as with most “randomized” decision-making processes, I really think this helps to elicit your true feelings (e.g. when you flip a coin to choose between two restaurants and are disappointed with the outcome–boom, here’s your answer!).

Deep down inside, I know where I want to go–it’s the in-between’s on the list that I’m really having a problem with deciding between, but this really helped for those!
(Today is Match Day for the AOA side, but I skipped it in favor of the ACGME match, so I won’t find out where I’m going until March 18th!)

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• How do you make important life decisions?
• Would you leave important life decisions to chance/whatever’s “meant to be?”

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