Playing the Game of Externships

The 4th year of podiatry school requires you to spend 3-5 months working and learning with podiatry residency programs throughout the country. As a student I had some control of where I was required to go by only applying to work with ones that I would consider as potentials for my upcoming 3 year residency training. I ended up spending time in Denver CO, Salt Lake City UT, Albuquerque NM and Portland OR. These "externships", as they are called, are like a month long interview. As students we are constantly being evaluated academically, socially and personally. We had to be ready at all times to be "pimped". Pimping in the process of a doctor asking a student whatever questions the doctor can think of. Questions can be super random facts about authors of research papers to anatomy questions. I am not much of a stress-er but I will have to admit that during this process I did find myself much more uptight and not acting like my usual self.

Then to wrap up the whole process we had our boards part II exam a week and a half before residency interviews. At these interviews every podiatry student and most of the podiatry residencies in the country met in Frisco Texas in one huge hotel. Interviews were kind of nuts. Each floor of the hotel had multiple hotel rooms or suites with chairs out front where you could sit nervously while waiting to be called in for questioning. The interviews could consist of anything; social questions, academic questions, demonstration of surgical skills, clinical scenarios and any sort of critical thinking activity the programs could come up with.  The hotel was full of stressed out students doing their best to act confident and likable and the fact that there was supposedly a huge shortage of residency positions available this year only added to the environment. Most evenings consisted of socials where residency programs tried to entice the top students to rank their program high and the students tried to impress those people who they thought were the decision makers. I interviewed with 12 programs and had 2nd interviews with some of them so it was a busy three days. I am glad it is over. After the interviews the students rank any of the programs that they would accept in the order that they want them. The programs do the same for the students that interviewed with them. These ranking get tossed into a magic box and we get the results on March 20th. So currently everything is out of my hands.

I was away from home for a three month stretch while I spent November in Utah, December in New Mexico and January in Portland. It wasn't so fun being away and living out of a suitcase but it was awesome seeing different parts of the country.

Overnight lodging while traveling through Nevada. 

Beautiful day of climbing up Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. 

Court on the traverse up Little Cottonwood. 

Corey sending a climb up Big Cottonwood Canyon while Skyler and Tori stand all amazed.

Running a snow trail up above Layton with Spencer, Steve,  his brother in law and Pete.

Toured up to Wolverine Cirque on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah. 

View to the west down into the small town of Alta. Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah. 

Got a morning of skiing with my attending, Dr. Margiotta, at Ski Santa Fe Resort in New Mexico 

Study break! Running the trails above Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Sunday drive to Mt. Hood in Oregon. If I wasn't sick I would have been all over that.

Kimber came to visit! Exploring some waterfalls in the Columbia Gorge outside of Portland, Oregon. 

Where will we end up for residency?