Episode 11 - The SOAP Process (Interview with Olivia)

Speaker 1 (00:15)

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Emotional Millennial. This podcast is a space to have authentic no BS conversations about mental health, medicine, our culture, and whatever else may be in my mind. It is my goal to make you feel seen, heard, and understood. I believe vulnerability is not only a superpower, but the best way to connect with each other. Thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoy this episode today. I am so excited to have Olivia join us as my first guest on this podcast. Olivia is an all around incredible person. She is about to graduate from medical school or actually, I think she just did graduate from medical school this past Friday. So Congratulations to her. And she will be starting residency and family medicine in a couple of short months. I am so grateful that she has agreed to come and share her recent experiences with the residency program matching process, and I know her insight will be invaluable for so many people. So without further Ado, let's welcome Olivia.

Speaker 3 (01:18)

Okay. So welcome Olivia. Thank you so much for coming on to chat about your experiences. I really appreciate it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about this.

Speaker 3 (01:28)

Yeah, I heard you just graduated on Friday.

Speaker 2 (01:30)

Yeah, I'm finally done. It feels like a crazy amount of time, but also no time at all. So it's super exciting.

Speaker 3 (01:37)

Congratulations. How did they do the ceremony for you guys?

Speaker 2 (01:40)

It was all in person. No masks or anything, so I think our normal graduation would probably have been oh, that's so nice.

Speaker 3 (01:47)

That's really nice. Cool. Okay, so basically what I want you to be able to talk about today is your experience with the soap process. I personally do not go through the soap process myself, but I know that you recently went through that, and so your first hand experience, I think will be super valuable for other people who might potentially be going through that at some point.

Speaker 2 (02:12)

Yeah, definitely. I hope I can help even just one person because it's a very stressful time, but I think it ended up going really well. It was a successful match for me by the end, so I'd love to be able to share some advice to anyone out there going through the same thing.

(02:26)

Awesome.

Speaker 3 (02:27)

Thank you. So let's start all the way back before medical school. Just kind of like what brought you to medicine in the first place.

Speaker 2 (02:35)

Yeah. So no one in my family is actually in medicine. Funny enough, both of my parents are engineers, and even from a super young age, they'd always said to us kids, me, my brother, and my sister like, oh, you guys should definitely become doctors. Doctors are always needed. It's a great job, but I always wanted to be a marine biologist, so I never really listened to them. But when I was in 8th grade, my dad got diagnosed with multiple myeloma. And for the following eight years, he was in and out of the hospital and kind of just every day after school, my brother and sister and I would go to the hospital and just spend time with him. And seeing how his care team really affected his life and his outcomes eventually made me realize, I'd want to go into healthcare. He ended up passing away, but I attribute all of my successes to him. Honestly. He was just such a great example to me. So that's kind of why I wanted to go into medicine and even going into medical school. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, honestly. I was very open minded.

Speaker 2 (03:29)

I tried to go through everything pretty open minded, but I guess we'll kind of get into it later. What I ended up picking, but I was very open minded in medical school, trying to figure out what exactly my passions were.

Speaker 3 (03:41)

Well, I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sure that your dad is very proud of you now.

Speaker 2 (03:45)

Thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:49)

So when you first applied to residency last year, what specialty did you choose to apply to?

Speaker 2 (03:56)

So the first time that I applied, I went through the San Francisco match to apply to Ophthalmology.

Speaker 3 (04:02)

Okay. And can you describe your experience with how that application process was? Because I'm sure it's a little bit different than the other one. Thermp yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:15)

So it goes through SF match, San Francisco match, you upload your entire application onto that portal. It's very similar to eras. I personally like the format a little bit better than Earth, but it was very similar. You could put your personal statement on there, and then there was a couple of different essay questions that they would specifically ask you. The character account was, I believe, quite a lot lower than eras, but yeah, it was very similar in pretty much every aspect, except for the fact that everything was due much earlier. So my application had to be submitted, I believe, a month ahead of time. And then we found out our match results also a month ahead of time compared to the normal NRMP match.

(04:53)

Okay.

Speaker 3 (04:53)

So do you remember the date, actually, that you found out about your match?

Speaker 2 (04:58)

Yeah, I believe it was February. I'm pretty sure that was the day. Obviously, that was like a big day for me. And just knowing that it was coming was very stressful. I obviously thought it was going to go well. I didn't think that I was not going to match. Pretty much all of my mentors had said, you're going to be fine. It's going to be okay. All but one mentor actually told me that. And yeah, it didn't go okay. So it didn't end up going quite as slow.

Speaker 3 (05:30)

Yeah. So were you in any way prepared for that possibility of not matching?

Speaker 2 (05:35)

I think, like, in the back of my mind, I always was like, okay, this isn't going to go well. I don't know. I always sort of have a little bit of doubt in my mind just so that if something bad does happen, I'm more prepared than if I hadn't had that little bit of doubt. So there was a little voice in my head saying like, this isn't going to go well. But I truly did believe that I was going to match just because everyone that saw my application said, you're going to be just fine. And so I believe that truly.

Speaker 3 (06:05)

And hearing you say that really kind of brings me back to that place, too, because I had a very similar situation and I totally believed in my mentors, too. And so getting that shock is just like, wait, how could this be?

(06:20)

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:20)

So what did you say?

Speaker 2 (06:24)

It definitely wasn't great. The whole morning was stressful. I barely slept that night the night before, because I was just anticipating clicking Refresh and it's saying you didn't match. But I had so much hope. I really thought that it was going to go as planned, even though there was a little bit of doubt. I just was like saying prayers. If this is meant to be, let it be. And honestly, I have peace in knowing that. I truly think this wasn't meant to be because of how everything happened after the fact, which we'll get into. But yeah, it sucked, especially I clicked the Refresh button right at 08:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and it said, Sorry, you did not match. And I completely broke down. It was really horrible.

Speaker 4 (07:09)

Yeah, I can't even imagine.

Speaker 3 (07:11)

So is that how that online match process works is like it just kind of shows up on the screen?

Speaker 2 (07:18)

Yeah. So I had my SS match application open and then right at 08:00 you can click Refresh and it will give you your match results. I believe they also did send an email. If you match, it would tell you where also that you matched. And then if you didn't match, it would just say, Sorry, you didn't match. So that's another little difference from the NRMP matches that you find out on the same exact day at the same time if you match and where you matched.

Speaker 4 (07:45)

Okay.

Speaker 3 (07:46)

And then the programs that you interviewed at, were they combined programs or did you also interview at Ty programs or how did that work?

Speaker 2 (07:57)

Yeah, that's a good question. So up until this year, all of Ophthalmology programs have had the option of being traditional where you have to apply for your own Ty here and then a separate three year Ophthalmology program versus being an integrated program where they supply you with that first year. So that was a little bit different for me. I did indeed apply to a couple of different Ty programs and preliminary spots in case I had matched a program that was traditional. But as of 2022, I believe all further matches the programs for Ophthalmology has to be integrated where they will supply you with that first year. So I think that will be different this year for new applicants.

Speaker 4 (08:36)

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (08:37)

It definitely, definitely saves time and money in terms of applying and having to deal with more interviews. It's just such a hassle.

Speaker 2 (08:44)

Absolutely. Yeah. It was definitely not fun trying to coordinate interview dates for multiple different types of programs.

Speaker 3 (08:51)

Yeah. Especially if you're just spending, like, one year somewhere. It's kind of like awkward.

Speaker 2 (08:56)

Absolutely. And they know it too. They're not asking you questions like, Why do you want to be here? Because they know that we're only doing it for the fact that we can't have our own Ty here with our Ophthalmology program.

Speaker 3 (09:06)

Right. I don't really want to be here, but I have to do a year somewhere. So please take me. That's funny.

Speaker 2 (09:12)

It was funny. The interviews for those spots, those tyres and preliminary years, the interview length itself was maximum 1 hour. And they would do a super brief intro. You'd get asked maybe two or three questions, and then they'd be like, all right, thanks.

Speaker 3 (09:27)

That's so funny. The whole interview day was like an hour.

Speaker 2 (09:30)

Yeah, they were very short.

(09:32)

Wow.

Speaker 2 (09:33)

Okay.

Speaker 3 (09:33)

Well, I guess that's kind of nice.

Speaker 2 (09:35)

Yeah, that was horrible.

Speaker 3 (09:37)

Okay, so take me back to that day. You find out you didn't match, and then how did you navigate the rest of that day?

Speaker 2 (09:45)

Yeah. So like I said, at eight a mist, I clicked Refresh and it says Harry did not match. I remember I was standing right over here in this corner of my room and I clicked Refresh and saw that. And my boyfriend was staying home from work until he found out if I matched or not. And I told him I didn't match. I think it didn't really hit me until an hour or so later because I was super calm. And I just said I didn't match. And he was like, no way. Because out of everyone in the world, my boyfriend Jordan is the person that believes in me the most. I would say him and my mom probably. But he was like, absolutely not. There's no way that you didn't match. It has to be a mistake. He's like, click refresh a few times. It probably just didn't load yet. It's like, no, Jordan, I didn't match. And so I sat on my couch and I just started bawling my eyes out. I was so sad and I just felt like such a failure. And that doubt in my head had been there because I should have always done to myself.

Speaker 2 (10:42)

Like my application wasn't good enough or I didn't do something that I should have done or whatever it was. I was just feeling every little piece of doubt that I possibly could imagine. And yeah, after the first hour of crying, I received a call from one of my mentors. The mentor being one of the program directors at my home institution for Ophthalmology. And she expressed her condolences for the fact that I hadn't matched. And she was like, Are you okay? Are you mentally okay? I got offending at the fact that this is, like, really detrimental to someone's mental health, which it is. But I didn't even realize how actually serious this was, how much time and effort I spent putting into my application. It was just a simple fact that I worked so hard for this and I didn't match. What do I do? I didn't even know so many things were going through my head. What are my next steps? I think it was important for me to just my boyfriend helped me with this. Just, like, slow down and realize I don't have to do anything right now. I just need to be okay.

Speaker 3 (11:45)

Yeah, that's really awesome. And that's nice that your mentor reached out to check in on you and see how your mental health was doing, because I think that happened to me, too. And I think we're very lucky that we have people that care about us that are willing to do that, because I'm sure there are so many people that don't match and just feel so alone because they don't have someone checking on them. So that's really good. And also, your boyfriend sounds incredible. So that's great. You got to keep her.

Speaker 2 (12:10)

Yes, for sure.

Speaker 3 (12:11)

So when you were thinking about your next steps and what you wanted to do, what were you considering going forward?

Speaker 2 (12:19)

Yeah. So I had talked to this mentor that had called me actually to prepare for the worst case scenario should that happen. I think she kind of sat down with all of us applying also just so that in case something bad happened, we would have a plan. And so I had kind of already in my head knowing what my next steps were. I just didn't really want to sit down and actually do them. But basically, if you don't match an Ophthalmology, you do still have one month where you can obviously prepare an application for the soap cycle. You can mentally prepare. You can physically prepare with an application. So I knew that that was one option that I was going to do in case I wanted to match into something completely different during the soap process. Granted, that would be considering that Ophthalmology typically doesn't have any open spots during soap. So I knew ahead of time that I probably wouldn't be matching if I went through soap into Ophthalmology. So that was one option. Another option that I had was that I could apply to research internships. And so that would have meant that I was going to take a year off or I guess I would still graduate, but then I would take a year and do research.

Speaker 2 (13:21)

But there's several different institutions across the United States where they offer this type of thing. They're not typically paid. Some of them are, but basically, you just do a year of research with a mentor in hopes that it can boost your application enough for the second time that you apply and get enough publications that it will make some sort of difference in your application. So that was the other option that I had. My mentor had told me ahead of time she didn't really recommend this option because if you take that year and you again don't match now, you still don't have a job. You have wasted a year on Ophthalmology when you should have maybe been preparing your application for a different specialty. So in the back of my mind, I was kind of dead set on doing that at the time that I didn't match because I really was gung Ho on Ophthalmology and I wanted to do everything I could to prepare myself for applying again. So I think on that day, that was my mindset. But obviously, I'm here today to tell you that I match with soap. So I did end up changing my mind.

Speaker 2 (14:19)

But on that day, that was what I was planning on doing, and that is what I did.

(14:24)

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:25)

And that's so hard to even consider another specialty. Like, right when you find out that you didn't match into your dream specialty, it's like hard to even conceptualize doing anything else. So it definitely takes time to reevaluate yourself and think about what it is that you want. And if you could even consider doing another specialty.

Speaker 2 (14:46)

Absolutely. Yeah. It takes a lot of I don't even know what you would call it, like introspection, I guess, to really realize what lies at the core of your goals and your passions and what you want out of your life to be able to say, put your pride aside for your original specialty and say, okay, what do I actually want out of my future? And so I think I did a lot of that over the following week. I'm very religious, so I prayed a ton every single day, even before I open the match, I was just like, lead me to where I need to be so that I can end up in the right spot. And throughout that first week, I did apply to pretty much every single research year that was available within Ophthalmology. That in itself is very difficult to do. I would highly recommend to anyone that wants to go that route to join the discord for Ophthalmology, because that was a super helpful resource and I wouldn't have been able to do it without everyone else's help. Truthfully, there's not like a very good resource out there to know where to find these websites to apply to.

Speaker 2 (15:51)

We could talk about that later. But yeah, I did end up applying to all of them, but I didn't do a single interview because I ended up changing my mind and deciding that I wanted to go through with.

Speaker 3 (16:00)

So, yeah. So what is the timeline for that? I guess first, about the discord, how did you find the discord? And how could someone who's, like, maybe going through this now find that?

(16:12)

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:12)

So there's an Ophthalmology Google spreadsheet. There's one for every specialty, but Ophthalmology has one. And on the front page of that Google spreadsheet is a link to the discord. And I have been a part of the discord for a very long time. Throughout pretty much the whole application cycle, I was a part of it. But then they've created a separate channel for people who didn't match so that they could figure out exactly what to do. And everyone was super kind and very helpful with sharing resources and really just trying to help each other out, because at this point, there are a lot of people who don't match, and they're all competing for these positions of the one year mentorship or the one year research opportunity. And so it was really nice that it wasn't cut throat and, like, not sharing resources with each other. It was actually very helpful.

Speaker 3 (16:56)

That is really nice. So what were those applications like?

Speaker 2 (17:00)

So it was different for every different opportunity. Some of them just wanted you to forward your San Francisco match application. So those ones were nice because they didn't require any work whatsoever. You just had to forward them your application. Some of them wanted new letters of recommendation. Those ones were much more difficult because you're trying to scramble and get new letters. Some of them had a couple of different questions like, why do you think you didn't match? Or why do you want this research opportunity? What do you think we can provide to you? And then a couple of them were very short. They wanted, like 300 characters length about why you wanted to move to that area. So they were similar questions to what you would expect on an interview trail for residency in general. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Speaker 3 (17:44)

Do you know when those were due, like, what the timeline was for that?

Speaker 2 (17:47)

Yeah. So none of them actually had a due date. I think maybe one or two out of this whole list of locations had a due date. All of them were just like, oh, we're going to go through these on a rolling basis, which isn't very helpful because you're, first of all, just trying to cope with the fact that you didn't match. And now you're trying to prepare either an application or letters of recommendation or answers to interview questions on a rolling basis, which is so unhelpful because, of course, that means I want to do it now. I want to get in ASAP, but I'm not mentally prepared to do this right now. So that was challenging. I think I gave myself a leeway of, like two weeks to get it all done, which is pretty quick, in my opinion, but still, I had to have some sort of deadline in my mind. Just I didn't go crazy.

Speaker 3 (18:29)

Yeah, you did bounce back pretty quickly. I don't know if I would have been able to do that in two weeks. Honestly, I was like pretty much down for the count after I didn't match. So props to you. So do they send out interview invitations or how does that work?

Speaker 2 (18:45)

Yeah. So like I said, I didn't actually end up going through with any of the interviews, but they did end up sending out interview invites. Most of them are via Zoom. Some of them use Talamus, which is something software that Eras uses, but they were similar in regards to other residency interviews. They weren't much different.

Speaker 3 (19:07)

Okay. And do most of these programs have, like one spot?

Speaker 2 (19:11)

I think so, yeah. A lot of them didn't. I don't think they necessarily specified how many spots they had, but yeah, I think majority of them were one. I will mention on the discord chat, there were some people who had given their advice because they themselves hadn't matched the year prior, and now they were matching and they were sharing that there are some off the record mentorship opportunities available, and they would kind of just give their name and number and say, you can reach out to me and I'll give you my mentors name. So I do know that those were also options. And again, I don't really know how those sorts of interviews would work or how many positions would be available for them, but there really are quite a few opportunities that you can look into if that's the route that you end up wanting to go. It's not just like a dead end road for you and you're just kind of thrown to the Wolves, but you do have to do quite a bit of work in order to figure out where these secret positions are available.

Speaker 4 (20:02)

Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (20:04)

Thank you. That's actually really helpful, I'm sure, for a lot of people. So February is when you found out you didn't match, and then how much time did you have to think about the sale process or prepare for that?

Speaker 2 (20:18)

Yeah. So like I kind of mentioned before, my mentor at my home institution had given us this backup plan in case things went poorly. So I had already kind of mentally prepared for the fact that maybe soap would be an option for me. On the evening of February 8, one of the Deans from my home institution called me Doctor Brown, and she provided a lot of mental support for me. Emotional support. She's amazing. I really love her. But she basically told me the whole rundown of the soap week. So that night, I actually kind of mentally got into my head what that week would look like. It was super overwhelming, but it was nice to kind of just know exactly what was going to happen the week of soap. And over the following, I would say I had a full month before I had to fully actually be ready to do soap but I kind of explored my options again. I prayed a ton and kind of just thought, like, there's no downside to doing Soap except for the fact that you have to mentally be ready for it because you're not forced to go through with accepting an offer unless you want it.

Speaker 2 (21:22)

You don't make a rank list as soon as you click submit. There's no obligation on your end to go through with it. So in my mind, I thought, what is the downside? I should at least just see what options are out there. If I don't like any of them, I just won't go through with it. But an off chance that there's a position that I actually really like, then I'm fully ready for it. So I decided to take the following month after February 8 to write a new personal statement to get three new letters of recommendation to prepare an entire new application, which ended up being kind of pointless because you don't get to upload a home and application, which is interesting. You just get to upload a new personal statement and letters. So that was interesting, I thought. But yeah, I really just took the four weeks and sat down and got ready to answer the tough questions that you would be asking me by residency programs when I went through Soap.

Speaker 3 (22:17)

So did you have an application in eras because of the transitional year stuff?

Speaker 2 (22:22)

Exactly, yeah. Okay. That is why I don't know how this sort of Soap week would work if I didn't already have my application uploaded. That was something I asked my Dean, and she also wasn't really sure of the answer to that because there was no way for me to go back and change anything on my ears application when it came down to Soap. So I don't really have any advice for people who maybe didn't end up applying on eras the first time around because the deadline had already passed. I couldn't fix anything on the application. I couldn't add any new publications or whatever. Like I said, I could only send out a new personal statement and new letters of recommendation, which I think really did help my application by this point in time.

Speaker 3 (23:03)

That's really interesting. I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2 (23:06)

Yeah, I didn't either.

Speaker 3 (23:07)

So I guess what specialties were you thinking about applying to, like, prior to the week of Soap? Because you have to wait now a whole month before you even know what spots are available.

Speaker 2 (23:20)

Right, right, exactly. So what I ended up doing was I found on a couple of different Reddit websites, lists of specialties that had been available in the past. There's no guarantee that that's going to be the same thing as now, but I just wanted some sort of idea in my mind of, like, what would be available. And typically with Soap, there's a lot of internal medicine physicians left, a lot of family medicine. Occasionally there's some radiology and then emergency medicine as well. So the primary care typically is what's most available because there's the most demand for those sorts of doctors. And then every once in a while there's a smidgen of other different specialties. But I wasn't counting on any of that to be available because, like I said, there's no telling that that's actually going to be the case. Plus, my whole application was geared toward Ophthalmology, so I had to kind of turn around and think, okay, what are these programs going to be seeing when they look at my application? It's going to be Ophthalmology. So I might as well now prepare a personal statement and letters that are more primary care oriented, because I know that's what probably my options are going to be come Soap week.

Speaker 2 (24:26)

So that's what I did. I got three new letters of recommendation. I got two from actually, three were all from internal medicine specialties. So that was, I think, pretty helpful. And they'd all been with doctors I had just recently worked with within the past couple of weeks and months leading up. And then I also compared a new personal statement that kind of addressed why I thought I didn't match, not super focused on that, but kind of just why I'm now leaning more towards primary care. And so, like I said, those are the things that these programs could now see on my application.

Speaker 4 (25:01)

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (25:03)

And so were you on rotations then when you were going through all of this?

Speaker 2 (25:08)

Yeah. Okay. That was probably the hardest part about all of this, honestly, was knowing that I still had to go to the hospital and somehow tell people either I didn't match and this is what I'm doing, or, like, it's kind of tiptoe around the fact that I didn't match. And what do I even say? That was honestly really hard for me because I think a lot of people probably knew I was applying Ophthalmology, and they also knew that it was an early match. And so luckily, majority of people didn't say, like, oh, did you match? I think a lot of people know probably not to do that, but obviously the people that I was applying to Ophthalmology with, they knew. And then my closest friends, of course, knew. But when it came down to going to rotations and having the attendings and other residents ask, what are you applying to? I ended up just telling them, oh, I'm applying Ophthalmology, but I'm taking a research here, and I'll be applying next cycle because that way I didn't really have to explain. Like, oh, I didn't match. I didn't have to go into that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (26:05)

And at that point in time, that was my plan. I was planning to do a research here and then reapply. Also, I actually truly hadn't decided fully on Soap until, like, the week prior to Soap. I was just preparing an application in case I wanted to do so that's what I ended up telling people. And it was totally fine. Everyone was super nice about it. No one really prided that much into it. They were just like, oh, that makes sense. Well, good luck in the future. And that was that. But it was really hard because after I ended up matching with Soap then it was even more difficult because now I'm telling people I'm doing a research here and I'm reapplying also when I have a residency position, like, I've accepted a soap offer and I didn't decide to end up changing what I was telling people because I was midway through a rotation when I matched. And so half the people were going to know that I was still applying up, though, and I didn't feel like going back and explaining to them what had happened. So I just left it at that. But it was funny.

Speaker 2 (27:00)

At graduation, I saw the attending that ran that program there, and he was probably so confused, like, what is going on? Because in the pamphlet, it tells where you match and what specialty. But that's not my problem. It was the truth when I told them originally that that's what I was doing. So it is what it is.

Speaker 3 (27:18)

Yeah, absolutely. That's so funny. And it's like if you were to explain it, the story is just too long and they're not going to understand. So it's like, yeah, something short, sweet to the point, and they can just let it go. So now let's go to the week of soap.

(27:35)

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:35)

What was that week like?

Speaker 2 (27:37)

Okay, so I Luckily had the benefit of knowing ahead of time what the week was going to look like and preparing an application. But for majority of people, you find out on the Monday of Soap week whether or not you matched. Okay. So NRMP, they find out on that Monday if you match, not where you match. So anyone that didn't end up matching now has to mentally prepare and physically prepare an application for the following Tuesday. So the next day you have exactly 24 hours to prepare an application and to prepare letters of recommendation and a personal statement, everything that I had a month to prepare. Most people have 24 hours, which is really unfortunate and super sad. Makes me feel really bad for people that didn't end up going through with Ophthalmology to only have a day. So basically, by that Monday, my application was fully prepared. I had uploaded all of my letters of recommendation and my personal statement, and I was ready to go. So by Monday, I was able to apply to all of the family medicine residency spots within Michigan because my goal is to stay in Michigan. That's where I'm from.

Speaker 2 (28:42)

And I got to see the full list of all of the different positions available that came out at, I believe I want to say either 09:00 A.m. Or 10:00 A.m. Eastern Standard Time on that Monday. And I don't really quite recall the website it comes out on, but you get an email that was a link to all of those spots, and you get to see them. So, yeah, I sat down, wrote down all the different programs I wanted to apply to, and then by that evening, I had applied to them. And it's free. You don't have to pay. You get up to, I believe, 60 different applications you can send out. That's fully covered by NRMP, which is really nice.

(29:19)

Wow.

Speaker 3 (29:19)

Finally, something's free. That's great.

Speaker 2 (29:22)

Not technically free, probably. It's wrapped up in all the other thousands we've paid, but it's good.

Speaker 3 (29:28)

How nice of them. I want to back up a little bit. So you said you ended up applying to family medicine only.

Speaker 2 (29:37)

Yes, that is correct.

Speaker 3 (29:38)

Okay, so how did you come to that conclusion?

Speaker 2 (29:41)

So I came to that conclusion after doing a lot of soul searching and figuring out what exactly I want my future to look like and realizing that primary care is, I think, actually where I do belong, truly, because I hated when I would be an Ophthalmology or any specialty, really. And a patient would ask a question unrelated to the specialty, and the attendant would have to say, I'm so sorry, that's not my domain. You have to go ask your primary care doctor. So I really love that aspect of family medicine. You get to be the expert on your patients and you can answer everything for them. There might be someone who knows a little bit more about that specialty, and you can refer them to the attending, but you can really answer everything for them. So that kind of narrowed it down a little bit. But I do like primary care a lot. And then family medicine, because my number one favorite rotation throughout medical school was Obgine. I absolutely loved it. And I was always sad that I couldn't apply to obeying because the lifestyle wasn't at all what I wanted. I didn't want to be on call at the time.

Speaker 2 (30:35)

I didn't want to have to be working nights. And that's why Ophthalmology was so interesting to me. It was because of the lifestyle. And so I didn't apply OB GYN. But family medicine allows you so many different options in Obgi. You get to deliver babies if you want or you can deliver your own patients. All these other things that I love about family medicine is, I think, aligns very well or it can align very well with Obginn. So that's why I ended up applying family medicine. And so that kind of helped me narrow it down a little bit.

Speaker 3 (31:06)

That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And I totally relate on basically everything that you were saying, because that's definitely what led me to go to family medicine, too. So that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (31:17)

Yeah. That conversation you and I had after not matching was very eye opening. And at the time I had spoken to you originally I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I was sort of leaning towards family medicine. And then when you kind of shared all the different things that you can do within family medicine, I was like, wow, this is a really cool specialty. There's so many things you can do.

Speaker 3 (31:37)

I'm happy that I was able to recruit you to become a family vet Doc. That's great. Okay, so after you apply through Soap, then when is the first time you hear back from our program?

Speaker 2 (31:51)

You apply that Monday evening? I think by 08:00 A.m. On Tuesday you have to have your applications in. And then throughout all of Tuesday the programs get to go through applications and send out interviews. So you don't actually have to speak to anyone on Tuesday. But you're getting contact information from people who you will then be hearing from on Wednesday and Thursday. So you're getting your interview scheduled on Tuesday. You are getting a ton of emails, probably from programs either setting up interviews or just saying like welcome and getting the information to know if you want to send up the interview. But then the very first contact that you have with anyone would be the following Wednesday. So Wednesday starting super early in the morning or anytime, really, you have to just be ready. You have to be on your game because you could be getting a phone call, you could be getting an email, you could be getting a Zoom invite. All of the above. Anything really is available as an option for an interview. And those go all of Wednesday. There's no time put off so you can get a call at 10:00 P.m. That evening and then they also go into Thursday.

Speaker 2 (32:58)

Same exact thing. You know what? Hold on. We have to redo this because I have my timeline totally messed up. Okay, find out. So it's actually Tuesday and Wednesday, I believe that the interviews are happening. So let me restart that. Okay, so Monday by the evening, or at least by 08:00 A.m. On Tuesday morning, you have to have your application submitted and then Tuesday morning all of the programs get to go through their applications and then they send out interviews starting Tuesday morning. And then interviews can come out all of Tuesday and all of Wednesday. So starting Tuesday morning, you have to be ready for a call or a Zoom or whatever the case may be to be ready for an interview. So then you interview all of Tuesday and all of Wednesday interviews can go out as late as like 10:00 P.m. Because the West Coast can send you an interview at any point in time. And then by Thursday morning is when the Soap runs start, which we can get into. But basically to answer your question, Tuesday and Wednesday is when you have to be ready to interview. And there is no easy way of going about this.

Speaker 2 (34:06)

You have to be super organized this whole Soap Week is honestly more of a testament to one's organizational skills than their interview skills. Because I'm telling you, I had 20 interviews over two days. And keeping track of like, okay, this person is going to follow up in 20 minutes or this person is going to call you in an hour or all the time changes. Everything is just very difficult. So just be ready. It's hard to fully prepare.

Speaker 3 (34:32)

But it's a lot do you have any tips for staying organized or how did you try to do that?

Speaker 2 (34:39)

Yeah. So I just consistently had my email open. I would refresh that like every 20 minutes. Any phone call that had a random number, I would answer. Sometimes they were not actually from interviews, but a lot of times they were. And then just keeping a note. What I did was I kept a note open on my phone and I would keep track of every single date and time that either I had spoken to someone already or I was planning on speaking to them in the future. Because sometimes you would get a call and they would say, oh, you spoke to so and so this morning and they won't tell you the program name. They'll just tell you, oh, you spoke to so and so. And then I would have to quickly reference my note and figure out which program that was that I spoke to or you can always ask to, but I don't know, it's a weird interviews are a little strange and that you don't know exactly what you should or shouldn't be saying. So I would just be super organized when you keep track of everyone you've spoken to, exactly what times and the time zone that you're planning on speaking to someone else.

Speaker 2 (35:37)

Because majority of my interviews were not in my time zone, so I had to keep track of that as well.

Speaker 3 (35:42)

Wow, that sounds like such a headache. And you just turned in your applications literally the night before?

Speaker 2 (35:48)

Exactly. Yes, 100%. Make sure you know your personal statement forwards and backwards, because a lot of people probably will only have 24 hours to really put that together. I had the month, so I did know it back and forth, but if it's something that you put together on the spot, make sure you know everything you put in there, all the details. Be ready to talk about how typically you would on a residency interview. Just be ready to really talk about everything. And my biggest piece of advice, something that I think everyone should really take home with this whole thing that I'm trying to tell you guys is that this Soap Week is just as much an interview for you as it is for the program. Really get your questions answered because you're going to be doing so many interviews. I had 20 in two days. And when you sit down and try to compare all these different programs, they all sound the same. You know, I only applied family members. There's only so many things that each program can do differently when they have to follow ACG and E guidelines and things like that. So ask the hard questions.

Speaker 2 (36:46)

Ask when are your people on call? When do your residents get to sleep? When do they have to come in on the weekends? What do they do for fun? Do you guys go out and drink together things that you might not normally ask in an interview? You should ask now because what's the risk? They also are interviewing a ton of people, and they know that this is probably your second choice. So you're already down just a little bit that when it comes down to it, you should really be confident in what you're picking and have a really great way of comparing these programs. And to me, the lifestyle questions are so important. And I had a lot of people on this soap week say, like, wow, you asked some really good questions. No one's ever asked me that. And it's probably because most people don't have the balls to do it. But I was like, if I'm going to be picking my second choice, I want to make sure I'm happy with that choice. So I did ask the hard questions, and I think it really helps when I could compare each program, the pros and cons of each of them to finally pick which one I wanted to go to.

(37:43)

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:43)

Good for you. That's really awesome. Did you take a bunch of notes from Mad writing while you're on the phone and stuff?

Speaker 2 (37:51)

So what I did ahead of time was I would prepare a full sheet, and on every sheet, I would write, like, the name of the program and then the same exact attributes I would have already listed out. So I could just kind of fill in the blanks so that at the end of the week, I could compare each of these papers to each other. I also had an excel sheet. I went overboard with this because I was really trying to figure out where would be the best place for me. So at the end of each interview, I'd go fill in my little spreadsheet. And yeah, it was a lot.

Speaker 3 (38:18)

It is so important. Like, it's where you're spending the next three years of your life. So can you go overboard? You only have two days and I cannot imagine doing 20 interviews in two days.

Speaker 2 (38:29)

It was insane. It was definitely the hardest week of my entire life. It was awful.

Speaker 3 (38:34)

Did you sleep?

Speaker 2 (38:36)

Yeah, no, I barely slept, especially that Tuesday evening. Knowing what I had just gone through on Tuesday that I would have to again do on Wednesday, I was like, so ready by Thursday to be completely done.

Speaker 3 (38:48)

Yeah, I can't even imagine. So after you're done with all of these crazy interviews, I guess when would you say was like, your last interview.

Speaker 2 (38:57)

I think my last interview was around 06:00 p.m.. Eastern Standard Time on that Wednesday, so I didn't know it was going to be the last one. I was still prepared for a call up until about 10:00 p.m., but I think that was my last one. And by that time, I kind of had a pretty good feeling about which programs were going to be my top choices. But again, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, you don't get to make a rank list. So Thursday, when you open up the application, you get to see all of your offers at once. So they all come out. It's actually very different from how IRS typically works where you submit a rank list and you only get one offer during. So if you get to see all of your offers at once and then you get to pick which one you want. So it's good to know a little bit ahead of time what your top choices are. But at the same time, it's like once you've done the work, now it's just up to them to send an offer if they want you. Okay.

Speaker 3 (39:51)

So on Thursday, because there's rounds of soap, right.

(39:56)

Okay.

Speaker 3 (39:56)

So the first round, what time was that at on Thursday?

Speaker 2 (39:59)

I'm pretty sure it was at either eight or 09:00 A.m.. I want to say I think it was 08:00 A.m..

Speaker 3 (40:04)

So then you log into Eras and you see what offers you have.

Speaker 2 (40:07)

Yeah. You log in and it's going to say round one open and then it will show you all of your offers, and then you either get to pick do I want one of these or no? So let's say program X is my number one choice. And I don't have an offer from program at 08:00 A.m., but I have an offer from ABNC, but I don't want A, B, and C. So what I can choose to do is I can just not accept any offer and then all of those offers go away. There's no saying if AB and C come back in round two. So that is the one risk by denying something in round one, majority of mentors are going to tell you you should accept an offer in round one because I don't know if I round two if I'm going to get another offer. Right. So luckily, in my case, I had an offer from my program X. I had one from the program that I was hoping to go to, so I accepted it and then I was completely done. So by 805, I believe that morning I was matched and it was at the one that I wanted and it was a great feeling, of course.

Speaker 2 (41:07)

But if that's not your situation, you have to kind of sit down. You have 2 hours until the next round and you can make calls. You can call your programs again. You could call your program X and figure out if they're planning to send you an offer the next round and you have a full 2 hours to either decline all your offers or accept one until round two. And then in round two, you might get those same offers you had in round one. If those positions still aren't filled, you might get an offer from your dream program that you were waiting for in round one, or you might not get any. So it is something you really have to think about if you end up wanting to decline in that first round, that it is a little bit risky. But if you're dead set on one of them, I guess it is worth it. But yeah, for me, it was a super happy time because I accepted an offer from my program that I wanted to go to perfect.

Speaker 3 (41:56)

It finally worked out for you. That's so exciting. I'm sure you're so happy to see it pop up during the first round. So do you have to decline the other offers then?

Speaker 2 (42:08)

Yes, if I remember correctly, there's a button that either says Accept this offer or decline this offer. I'm pretty sure I don't remember exactly because I was so excited to click and stuff, but I'm pretty sure that's how it was. Yeah.

(42:21)

Okay. Wow.

Speaker 3 (42:23)

That's so interesting. Like this is stuff that nobody ever talks about or that you would never have any idea unless you do it yourself.

Speaker 2 (42:29)

I hope I can help someone because I would have loved to hear this type of thing back when I did this back in my day.

Speaker 3 (42:39)

So you have 2 hours, you said, and no contact is off limits. Like you can call programs and yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:47)

So once initial contact is made on that Tuesday, nothing's off limits. There's still like, things you should maybe tiptoe around, I don't really know. But in my mind, do everything because this is your last chance. Right? Soap is it? There are technically, I think, other ways to go about it after soap, which I don't really know about, but in my mind, this is it. So what's the risk? Right? Obviously, I'm very professional and I would never say things that maybe I would say in other situations, but in terms of asking the hard questions or being the one to initiate contact, in my mind, do it all because you can't look back and be like, wow, I didn't try hard enough. Because if you do it all that you did do it all, that's kind of how I did it.

Speaker 3 (43:31)

Yeah, that's great advice. That's so interesting. So then you match there on Thursday, and then did you participate in the whole match situation with your school on Friday or how did that work?

Speaker 2 (43:47)

Well, it was funny because not everyone knew that I hadn't matched or initially with Ophthalmology or that I was doing soap or whatever. The way soap is set up, it's set up so that if you wanted to hide the fact that you did soap. You could, right. Because you find out on Thursday and everyone else finds out on Friday where they match. So if you just never told anyone you didn't match on that Monday, no one would know. Right. So that's pretty nice for people. But what I ended up doing was I did participate in that Friday with the match. It was all online, so I could just kind of enter onto my Zoom link. And I did participate in that. I went to my rotation Friday, which was funny because everyone was like, didn't everyone find out if they matched it? And I was like, yeah, I remember I'm applying it up, though, so I'll find out next year. At this point, I was still going with that story.

Speaker 3 (44:37)

That's so funny.

Speaker 2 (44:38)

I didn't tell anyone in person that I didn't have to accept, like, my best friend. And then I ended up deciding that what does it really matter? Of course, I'll just tell people. So I ended up making a social media post about having matched and kind of not going through with my initial match and then eventually matching. By that point, I think most people in my class knew, but still no single attending, except for my letter writers knew that I had gone through with this. So it's kind of funny, but it doesn't really matter at this point.

Speaker 3 (45:06)

Yeah, right. That's so fun. What are you looking forward to right now? So now that you matched and you have a little over a month, any plans before residency starts?

Speaker 2 (45:20)

Yeah. So I'm actually leaving on Friday. So like two days from now to go to Vegas. I'm excited for that. And then I'm going with my sister, and then we're flying to Portland, Oregon, after that to do some hiking. Yeah. So be there for a week, and then I'm home for a week, and then I go to the Virgin Islands. So I'm very excited for that. Wow.

Speaker 3 (45:40)

Lots of travel. That's so cool. I've never been to Portland, and I really want to go.

Speaker 2 (45:45)

Yeah. It looks so beautiful. So I'm very excited.

Speaker 3 (45:48)

Do you like to hike a lot?

Speaker 2 (45:50)

Yeah, I do. I think my number one vacation is laying on a beach, but my number two is definitely hiking.

Speaker 3 (45:57)

You'll get to do both coming up, right. That's great. Okay. Anything else that you can think of that you want to share?

Speaker 2 (46:05)

I think we pretty much touched on everything. Honestly, my biggest thing I really wanted to make sure people know is that the application you can't fix very organized and ask questions, so I think I had on those.

Speaker 3 (46:21)

Well, thank you so much for your time. Seriously. Appreciate it so much. And thank you for being my first official guest. It's so exciting.

Speaker 2 (46:31)

That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Like I said, I really hope someone can hear this and benefit from it. And my last parting words are just good luck and soap does not mean that you are not worthy of being a physician or that you're not worthy of being in medicine because it's a very messed up process, this whole residency application in general. And honestly, you will be so much stronger after soap. Truly, if you can get through it, even if you can't and you end up going through the next year, none of it matters because once you match, no one cares, no one's going to ask you did you go through soap, no one's going to ask you, what was your first choice or why did you pick this? You only have to share how much you want and none of it matters. So just good luck.

Speaker 3 (47:15)

Absolutely. I love it.

Speaker 4 (47:17)

Okay.

Speaker 3 (47:17)

Well, it was so nice chatting.

Speaker 2 (47:19)

Yeah, you too. Thanks so much. Annie.