<p>Mine has mixed feelings about her rotations. Certainly some fit her better than others. She is aslo not supportive of short fused personalities, she hope she will not change hers based on environment. This has been her major concern. Long hours / physical aspects seem to be secondary to that. She has been always proud of her ability to control her emotions and get disconnected from whatever is going on and focus on task at hand, on the moment. She see that it is not the case with some other people and she does not like it. I said, take it a a learning lesson, but, please, never ever behave like this yourself. She does not want to ger “contaminated” with this type of human interactions.</p>
<p>Well my kid wanted her fafsa pin so she could check on her fed loans. I asked “why now?” It appears the 4th years (her classmates who are not taking the optional research year) have been going through “loan counseling”. Although her number is staggering to us, she feels very fortunate it’s not worse. </p>
<p>She is very debt adverse so she has a completely unrealistic almost magical view of repayment during residency. Oh, well. We’ll burn that bridge and dash those dreams when we get there. ;)</p>
<p>She just needs to move back to the farm but still earn 50k to have any shot making any payments.</p>
<p>I do not believe in ANY repayment during residency, based on D’s current expanses. We are trying to focus on communicating “sustainability” hints. There are no plans (currently) applying to residencies in any expensive locations, but it is a long way before her application. We just hope that she can support herself financially living on resident’s salary (according to our calculations, that will be very tight) and preying every day on “no current loans, please”. Can only hope that she will not get into debt during residency.</p>
<p>DD figures she has been living on a small budget the past few years, with no family, if she gets a residency with a low enough COL town, she plans to do repayment during residency. She is used to living like a starving student, why stop now, she’d prefer to pay down the loans, if she can.</p>
<p>From what I have read on SDN, IBR repayment seems to be about $400-$500/mo.</p>
<p>It is my hope that Mom and old sorry Dad can at least keep the interest at bay during residency. That would be substantially less than we are paying now. </p>
<p>If…and it is not likely IMO …she is able to make any repayment of principal during residency that would be sweet. </p>
<p>I may have mentioned along the way that mine doesn’t do “starving student” very well. ;)</p>
<p>If things continue with “not so random boy” (did I get it right, curm?) in the future we will likely use one of our meager resident incomes to start paying down the staggering debt that is TWO med students’ worth. LOLOL.</p>
<p>Funny you should mention the seemingly non-random boy. After a D imposed hiatus, he is back in the picture. I give him props.</p>
<p>Oh. And btw, the seemingly non-random boy is in grad school, not med school. I think that may be worse. ;)</p>
<p>No “starving student” here, except the surgery rotation when they did not have lunch or any other break and were forced on consuming protein bars out of white coat pockets. Was not that big deal except for being thirsty. Anyway, surgery rotation is in a past, and yes, bill were lower, there was much less time to go out, but I guess, the social life is back to higher level (based on credit card balance). On a positive side, she was able to visit us, the next visit will be no earlier than Nov. when she is back in research.</p>
<p>Had lunch with D1 today (finally! and oddly not near the hospital by my work site).</p>
<p>She was wearing a cute pair of ballerina flats and I asked about them. She says Keens are her new go-to footwear of choice. Dressy enough to wear on rounds and comfy enough to wear for a 9 hour surgery. </p>
<p>She was wearing something like this:</p>
<p>[Keen</a> Sterling City Ballerina Chestnut - 6pm.com](<a href=“Keen sterling city ballerina chestnut keen | 6pm”>No results for Keen sterling city ballerina chestnut | 6pm)</p>
<p>The other thing that happened over lunch is that D1 and I laid down $1000 bet on her younger sister’s eventual specialty.</p>
<p>Neighborhood boy (LOL he’s 25 yrs old!) is a second year med student at a great med school and is doing very well, working hard, etc. His mom and I had coffee recently and she tells me he isn’t sure if he got into the school on his own merits. He has a friend from undergrad whose grandfather is the former chairman of the board at this particular school, practiced medicine and taught there for years.</p>
<p>He’s recently learned that the friend probably put in a good word for him with the grandfather because she knew the school was his first choice. He got in off of the wait list, so it’s a plausible story. He is one of those kids who wants to get things done on the merits of his own accomplishments and told his mom he will never know if he did it on his own or if this man ‘helped’ him get in. My question to you is: Does this kind of thing happen with admission into medical school? Could this former chairman have pulled strings and gotten him in? Suppose he will never know. I’m a bit amused because most people would welcome all the ‘good words’ they could get!!</p>
<p>Why is this any different from someone writing a great recommendation? He should consider it as Universe’s will to make him a doctor if he has self doubt.</p>
<p>According to an adcomm who posts regularly on SDN, a contact might help an individual get an interview at a given school, but it and of itself won’t get them admitted.</p>
<p>We have a family friend who offered to call the Dean of a particular med school (who had been his frat brother and college roommate) and get both/either D1 and D2 an interview there–so that kind of stuff does happen. (Both girls declined because it would “too weird”.)</p>
<p>Nobody and I mean nobody knows exactly why they got in to med school, a top law job, or HYP. Even if somebody in the know tells them something, you can rest assured there was more to it.</p>
<p>Curm - The word around is Ellie May Jabbar got into med school because she was blessed by an Indian cow. :p</p>
<p>Have you checked out the new residency thread somemom started?</p>
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<p>Agreed. I’m reading through Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and the book seems to be about him trying to make sense of his own success as much as it is about the positive deviants in society.</p>
<p>Had dinner not too long ago with both kidlets. (At the same time even!) Both had great stories about stupid things med students/residents do–</p>
<p>Case #1 3rd year med student doing clinicals walks out into the hallway of the hospital after examining a patient. He sees the back of a middle aged woman in scrubs leaning over a supply cart in the hallway looking for something. He calls out to her: “Hey Sugar! I need you go to into Room 123 right now and bandage a wound on my patient.”</p>
<p>The woman in question stands up, turns around and addresses said med student: “I am Dr. ZYX and I am the Chief of Anesthesiology at this hospital. If you at all value your future career, you will walk back down that hall, come back and address me properly and respectfully.”</p>
<p>[D2’s comment: I guess he can cross anesthesiology off his future specialty list.]</p>
<p>Case #2 Patient comes into the ER with a seriously injured knee. Chief of EM (who happened to working that night) examines the patient and calls for ortho consult. He phones the ortho resident on duty says: “This John Smith in the ED. I have a patient who is XXXX and YYYY [symptoms] and I need a…” Before the doctor can finish the resident hangs up on him–click!</p>
<p>Dr Smith applies pressure to the badly hemorrhaging knee and calls the resident back: “This is the ED, I need a….” The ortho resident hangs up again before the doctor can finish his sentence.</p>
<p>45 minutes later, after 2 other depts have done a consults and said–this is an orthopedic problem, Dr Smith calls the ortho resident yet again. Resident picks up. Dr Smith says “I’ve spent the last 45 holding this patient’s knee together with my hands trying to keep from bleeding out while waiting for you to come do a consult. I’m John Smith and I’m the Chief of EM. I don’t call for consults unless it’s necessary. You hung up on me not just once, but TWICE-- so I called your PD, you’re fired.”</p>
<p>An interesting story I recently heard from one of my friends: One of his female friends (not his gf) was dating a medical school student (in MS2 or MS3?) The med school student later told her that he is not at the stage in his life when he could afford the time in dating. He said that the majority of med school students at his school put so much pressure onto themselves in order to excel because they are eager to get into one of those competitive specialties. Since the said female one (in her late 20s) is interested in a more serious/committed relationship which could lead to a marriage and he is really not for many years to come, it is not fair for her to wait for him for many years before he is “ready” for a serious relationship.</p>
<p>During a call with our MS3 S recently, we received some “hint” from him that he might have tried to initiate a “semi-date”. I think it was a “semi-date” because it was not a one-on-one date. But it is not a group date like in high school either. Another friend of that girl came together to see a (likely) free movies on campus. Maybe this is a hint from this girl is that she is more interested in a “just a friend” relationship rather than “bf/gf” relationship? She is not a med school student but lives in the same dorm building. But I heard she has also accepted another “movie date” from DS (it appears both all happened within a week.) DS said he would just try to “meet with more people.” It is interesting that he would choose more hectic MS3 year to do this rather than earlier.</p>