My program was very supportive of its residents. New York City has a pretty tough rep as a residency location. But if you're at one of the ones where they're competing for residents, they're going to try to be a little bit nicer to you or a little bit more helpful. Being in New York, I think it was really great you get to see all sorts of different pathologies that I had never seen in Iowa. There are some differences. So one thing I think is like places in the Midwest are a little bit better in our transplant medicine.

So lung and heart transplants, specifically; we didn't have that at Cornell. I did see liver and kidney because we did see that a lot. There's a lot more transplants in the Midwest than in New York. (In NY), there's a ton more infectious disease, tuberculosis, HIV, pneumocystis, just all the different types of infectious diseases. There's also just an extremely diverse population there. I learned all sorts of languages that I'd never even heard of. Like Fuca Neas was one. It was very regular to have Polish, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, like just about every language you can think of. Just a very diverse patient population, which was a strength of the program basically. And just the different types of pathologies you see.

Luckily, I wasn't there during COVID. It was kind of a weird experience during COVID. I wasn't in residency during COVID; a lot of that became COVID medicine, not general medicine, but some things that really stick with me are more of the serious cases. You know, like the times patients died, or the times patients are really sick and you had to tell them the bad news.

Prioritize lower, are the Doximity rankings. Nobody cares about them. It's incredibly hyper-regional. So that's the one thing you should know. Do not listen to the ranking systems. 

Try to talk to people that hopefully aren't exactly at your interview day because you can't ask them after the interview day. Try to find other people that you can talk to who live in the area to size up the programs for you. And if you can find someone specifically in your field, even better, because once you start looking for a job on the other side, right, at least in internal medicine or in primary care. I interviewed for both hospitals and primary care. It's all connection-based. I didn't go on LinkedIn and send out my resume. I literally just asked the people ahead of me for a list of emails and I cold emailed people and they responded to you because that's kind of how it works. 

If anyone's in New York and they want me to break it down for them, I would be happy to. And I'll be honest.  So I'll give them the actual breakdown.

Yeah, there definitely was a transition to Iowa City. I went to Berkeley for undergrad. I lived mostly in big cities my whole life. I loved living in Iowa. And I was thinking about that transition. It was very different just because you got used to the kind of slower pace of life in Iowa. And then you moved to the city where it's go, go, go, all the time. People aren't smiling at you in the grocery store. Your space is much smaller. You have to carry your groceries home. There's no need for a car, which is really nice for me. The transition was a little bit easier because I had lived in New York City for a few months before medical school started. And I had some family here at the time and I had some friends. So that was good.

 I find most of the time from a social life perspective the transition isn't that bad because residency comes with like a group of friends, basically. But if you're coming from a more rural part of Iowa, or if you're someone who likes fishing, hunting, hiking, you can get it. It's in upstate New York, but it takes a little bit more time to get there. So it really kind of depends on what your hobbies are and what you like to do. Socially, you can go to shows, comedy clubs, live music, sports. I mean, New York City is probably tops in the world in that, in my opinion. 

One of the biggest things about the residency transition was just having the ability to do everything every week, but not exactly having the money to afford to do everything.

Magic shows. That's it. I always want to plug these magic shows. New York City is the capital of magic. I know it sounds crazy, but if you're here for dinner for an interview, check out Speakeasy Magic at the McKittrick Hotel. It's only on Thursdays and Fridays, but it's definitely a must-do because you're not going to get it anywhere else. It's a truly unique thing. That's only doable in New York and it's a great thing to do.

So I'm a primary care physician. I'm very happy. I love my job. I like what I do. I think that's the most important piece of advice I'd give to any medical student, M3’s especially. Because when I was an M3, I didn't really know what I wanted to do yet. I thought I wanted to be a urologist. I thought I wanted to be a dermatologist. I chose medicine because it's kind of the thing that people do when they don't know what they want to be. Then I started medicine and residency and I thought I wanted to be a cardiologist or a gastroenterologist. And I had always loved my family medicine rotation in Iowa. And I had loved my outpatient rotations in residency. As you're navigating your career, forget all the other stuff. Don’t try to pick the best reimbursement. Don't try to pick what you think is going to have the best market. Really, your top focus should be what you enjoy doing and what you've liked. And if you do that, then you're going to end up being good and happy at what you do. And other opportunities will come about as a result. I think that's probably the most important thing. 

The other thing I wish I had known earlier regarding going through Match is to just stay calm. All these people are high achievers. They're used to hitting all these benchmarks, but that stuff doesn't matter as much as you think it does. And you will be able to accomplish your goals in many different ways. If you really want something, there are a thousand different ways to get there. So just stay calm and enjoy the ride. Know that the intern year is really tough. It's a huge learning curve. I mean, I think residency is the single most important part of becoming a doctor.