Match day

Thursday was the official Match Day for graduating med school seniors, which means most of my classmates found out on Thursday where they're going to be doing their residencies (I've known since December, since the military match is early).

The day started with sleeping in (always a good thing), as 4th years get the day off. Then we had a "breakfast" (bagels and such) in the med school lobby before gathering at the Fawcett Center. At 11:30, they began the festivities with half an hour of incredibly boring speeches (well, mostly; Dr. Lucey, one of our vice deans, had some pretty funny statistics about how my class did in the match) and then they let us get our envelopes, which contained our match results (as I had already matched, I knew what mine would say). Then, at 12, they rang the bell, allowing us to open our envelopes. Nobody is allowed to know match results until 12 Eastern time. Kinda sucks for the students at University of Hawaii; their match is at 6am.

After that was a reception, and then the drinking events began promptly at 1 (I spent the time with Adrienne's family, so I didn't hit the bars until that night). Adrienne was rather excited--she matched at her first choice, and then her and Jeff put in an offer on a house, which was accepted. So new job and new house, all before 4pm.

We caught up with the rest of our classmates (at least, most of them) at 7pm, and everyone seemed really happy (I guess those who weren't happy probably weren't in the mood to be celebrating with the rest of the class). Almost everyone I talked to matched at one of their top three choices (that's considered a successful match). There were some pretty impressive names on that list, too, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Emory, Vanderbilt, UCLA, etc. All in all, it was a good day for OSU College of Medicine Class of 2009.