I was specifically looking for large academic programs. I wanted to make sure that the programs were RYAN Residency Training programs. There is a difference between OB-GYN residency's whether a program has support for abortion trading or not. So that was important to me as well. I wanted to change. I had obviously been at Iowa for a pretty long period of time. And so I had always wanted to be in more of an urban setting and to get training somewhere where there was a more diverse population than what I had grown up with.

New York, in general, is a bit of a culture shock. I think even if you have traveled significantly or visited, I think the actual business and professional side of things can be a little bit shocking. Actually. I was trying to figure out a more gentle way to say it, but that being said, you know, we do have residents here who are very successful, who are more, gentle and mild-mannered, but the stereotypes are true.

Living in New York City is great. I think that it's obviously expensive. So you had to be prepared for that. You have to be prepared to live in a pretty small apartment with no dishwasher and maybe bring your laundry somewhere else. If you're too lazy to take it to the laundromat, you can take it to the press and fold and that'll be fine. The reason I decided that I wanted to be on these coasts or live in New York City is I wanted to live here at least once before I ended my time on this planet, I suppose. 

Residencies are a discrete period of time that, I knew that it would be four years and I could really kind of dig in deep and the Bronx. Especially with my program, we serve as one of the poorest congressional districts in the country. And so that was also a big draw for me. It's really one of the only major academic centers that have that safety net for the city of New York. So there are a lot of social reasons to train here. And so I'm happy to talk to students who are interested in obstetrics and gynecology about going into or applying to programs in New York City.

They're high points and low points. Always include your co-residents. It is really important when you're interviewing to have a group of people you can be in the trenches with because it really does end up feeling like a war as evidenced by, last spring with COVID. We really only had each other and we only saw each other and many of us still only see each other. So it's kind of hard to pick your future comrades, through zoom.

I found that being in New York, I just, I have always had a very profound love of Broadway. So my partner and I went to so many Broadway shows before COVID and the, you know, just proximity, you can get cheap tickets on the day of, and, you know, kind of the whole world of arts and music and art music, and culture at your doorstep. And so I also think that it's really important in residency that you just hanging out with your friends and forget about being a resident sometimes because it is nothing like medical school especially if you're going into a rigorous field. You know, it's really important to have that support system.

Then the other thing that I wanted to say when I was talking about this year specifically, the ability to have family close is a tremendous asset.  I have many, many people ask me on my interview, what is your support system? Like, where are the people that you love? Where do they live? Because they don't want, an unhappy fellow, you don't want an unhappy resident. So, I think it's something important to take into consideration when doing these interviews is like, your family is important and where you end up and the ease of being able to see them. And so you're staying at your home institution. Isn't always the worst thing, either.

Unfortunately, the majority of our time in New York has been dominated by COVID and that was just so traumatic to so many people. I mean, we lost coworkers and I think we are having still reeling from that. So I think that that's still a very present thing that we think about every single day.

 I would say one of the good things that happened is my partner and I ended up getting engaged during COVID. And so he's also an OB-GYN resident and he's a fourth-year as well. We actually met on residency interviews. So you never know what will happen.

This was one of the most exciting times to go into medicine, that this is essentially the Renaissance of medicine that we have never been expanding our scientific knowledge at a rate like this before. So even in the wake of COVID, it is a really, really exciting time. Do not view your career as something you have to, but you're really a part of history in this period of time.

And the second thing is one of my research mentors said ‘we shine in the reflected light of others,’ and I wanted to impart that because I think they can get caught up in hyper-competition. And we become really concerned about ourselves and what we are doing, and really the more good that you're putting out into the world, the more research collaboration that you're doing, the less that you guard your ideas and your answers, and the more open you are to sharing them, the more that goes out into the world. And I think that that's so relevant in medicine and we forget it all the time.