Moving to Ann Arbor in 2012

I was pretty sure that no one was going to understand Andrew's picture. Lets just say that some people really took Lebron James betrayal to heart and still make weekly references to his infamous press conference.

If you don't know how matching into a residency works...allow me to explain (forgive me, this is not very good writing but my mind is working off much less sleep than normal).

First, apply to tons of schools with residency programs in your desired field (ours was Ophthalmology... eye surgery). The number of schools you should apply to varies but the more competitive the field, the more applications to send out. We applied to about 70.

Next, wait for interview offers. This is agonizing. Each program only has between 2-7 spots to fill and you always wonder why a certain program offers an interview while another program does not. There doesn't seem to be any distinguishable pattern to the process. Also, many interview offers are for the same day making it necessary to choose which one to go to and which ones to drop. Again, agonizing. It is especially fun when there are two interviews back to back on different sides of the United States. Andrew probably spent at least 5 nights sleeping on the floor of an airport.

Next, spend thousands of dollars flying to interviews all around the country (by the way, thanks to all those who let Andrew crash on their couch :)). After each interview, call your wife and tell her how it is the coolest university with the best faculty on the planet and it might be your new number one. She will promptly remind you that you have said the same thing about all the other programs. Become very confused about where you want to end up and what your real priorities are.

We ended up with 14 interviews which we ranked (if you know Andrew and I, you know that coming up with a rank list took us HOURS and HOURS of contemplation and debate to complete).

Each program also ranks the candidates they interviewed and submits that list.

Then the MATCH (a mysterious third party) takes all these rankings and puts them into a statistical algorithm that works some mathematical magic and spits out the best match for each candidate (theoretically this should be the highest program on your rank list that liked you the best as well). Make sense?

What all this means is that last week, our future was decided by a statistical algorithm. Scary. I didn't know whether to be relieved that we didn't have to make the final decision or frustrated that so much was out of our hands. Still, it has been a busy few months. We finalized our rank list and submitted it the day after Cameron was born (while we were still in the hospital). Then last Thursday we got the phone call...

In 2012, we'll be going to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

How do we feel about this? I think I can safely reveal that the University of Michigan was very high on our list and Andrew literally became tongue-tied when he found out (Andrew is rarely ever caught speechless). I'm excited for a new adventure (even if it will be a cold one). We probably won't move until the summer of 2012 but we don't find out about our match for intern year (2011) until March (confusing I know...welcome to med school). It is SO nice to finally have somewhat of a plan for the next 4 years.