Today was the second of our several all-day class meetings for the year. Instead of worrying about third year, which I guess we've mastered at this point, we have started talking about fourth year and picking a specialty (aka what you want to do when you grow up). The second half of the day consisted of a panel of residents talking about their various specialties followed by the med school equivalent of a career fair.
The panel was quite funny because it was mostly chief residents in various specialties trying to out-sell each other's chosen field to our auditorium full of moldable medical students.
Urologist: We have a little bit of everything! Surgery, chronic care, inpatient, outpatient..."
Neonatologist: Psh! You want everything?! We take care of the whole body, albeit a tiny, tiny body.
OBGYN-ologist: We have such diverse interests! Pregnant people, pelvic disease AND pelvic cancers! People say burn-out is bad, but I haven't burnt out yet even though I'm tired a lot...
Dermatologist: Our burnout is 0 'cause our lifestyle is awesome. But you do have to compete with the best of the best to pass our boards - assuming you can even get into our specialty after not matching even with years of research experience and clinical hours.
Pathologist: No burnout and it's easy to match! You get to see (tiny chunks of) patients everyday!
Radiologist: What he said! [scurries back into cave]
Orthopedic surgeon: We fix bones. Which is cool. Ug.
TIL: Taking Step 2 can be timed to promote or hide that score from the residencies you are applying for. If your step 1 score was really good, then Step 2 is more likely to hurt than help, so you can take it later in the year after residency programs need to already send out interview invitations. If you want another data point (say, if your Step 1 score was less than impressive), then take it earlier.
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