Jefferson Hospital.  I will be a resident at Jefferson Hospital starting sometime in…oh who cares.  Jefferson is in Philly and I don’t have to move.  That’s what it comes down to.  I just don’t want to move.  That’s about 20% boyfriend, 30% laziness (I get a two week vacation where everyone else has to go find a new place to live in their new city) and 50% savings.  Since my boyfriend pays the rent those savings are significant and since I have debt, they are also extremely necessary.

Remember your senior year of high school? How just didn’t care about anything? Remember your friends telling you how you passed your senior year in college in a drunken stupor and stating you don’t remember any of it because you somehow evolved past not caring? Med students hit that a little late.  See, when we were in high school and college we were on a mission, a treasure hunt for the fabled M.D.  Now we have it and we’re all thinking…this is it?

I know. I know.  You’re all thinking I’d be singing a different tune if I got a more prestigious residency.  Read on so I can tell you to go

ANYWAY if you read my last post you know I’ve been pretty jaded lately.  I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that if I wasn’t doing this one of the many failed premeds would be standing here in my place and 99.9% of every patient I ever have seen or will see will ultimately get approximately the same care…in all likelihood.  I am not ruling out the possibility that I could achieve true greatness. 

But then I overheard a type 1 doctor (aka doctor with doctor parents) complaining about his placement.  I mean are people any less dying at Temple than at Mass General? 

I am not a fan of sports analogies but please indulge me.  In professional sports, the crappiest teams, aka the teams that lose the most, get to pick first and in theory choose the best new players.  That’s how we achieve balance and parity between teams.  Don’t like your team? Well, there’ s always free agency. 

Think of firemen, or police officers for that matter.  They always want to be placed in the most dangerous or on the most dangerous beats.  Its almost as if they want to help people.  Doctors? Forget it.  We want Johns Hopkins on our resume.  Of course Police and Firefighters don’t have debt and by the time I am an attending physician I high school classmate who chose one of the former professions will be halfway to a pension…if they manage to stay alive.

Benito has a joke, nobody hates lawyers more than another lawyer.  I am starting to think maybe every profession is that way.  My mentor says I will feel less jaded as soon as I save someone on a crash cart or have a similar experience.  She chastises me about having a white boyfriend.  She’s a veteran speed dater.  It’s nice to know I have so much to look forward to.