Planning for the Match: Learning to expect the unexpected by Kristen Math
There’s an old German saying that goes like this: “Berg und Tal kommen nicht zusammen, aber die Leute”. This translates roughly to “Mountains and Valleys don’t come together, but people do” – people who are vastly different from one another, that is! It was no accident that this is how our pastor began our wedding ceremony. You see, my husband and I are polar opposites in many areas of our lives. We prefer to think that we simply balance each other out. He is the rational planner. I am the emotional, spontaneous one.
When it comes to organizing and preparing for the future, you can count on Thomas. This is the man who saves every letter he receives and organizes it by date in a three-ring binder. He prepares study plans months in advance of an exam and then never deviates from his strategy. His first two major post-training purchases reflected his desire to be in control. A satellite radio system for the car was his first splurge. Now, he could listen to exactly what he wanted without commercials. His ‘baby’ though is a GPS (global positioning system) for his car that allows him to program in a destination and then provides a detailed “live” map of the route.
I am a more spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal. I was the science graduate student with an entire notebook full of loose gel photos that I waited until I was writing my thesis to arrange…at the kitchen table…while my three children had dinner. It should come as no surprise that I spent the rest of the evening cleaning juice off of the salvageable photos! I was the undergraduate student who waited tables on the graveyard shift and decided on a whim to apply for the foreign exchange year where I met my husband. Within months of applying, I was settling in to a new ‘home’ in Germany thousands of miles from friends and family. I consider myself flexible. My husband think that I am…nuts!
It won’t come across as a bombshell then when I explain that applying for residency positions was an extremely stressful time in our house. My husband spoke very little English when we met. A few years later, after he completed his internship year in Germany, we decided to return to the United States. He applied for a 1 year residency position in the United Kingdom to brush up on his medical English. We spent two weeks driving through the United Kingdom to interview for residency positions.
The trip had its emotional highs and lows. Our trip and travel times did not prove to be as predictable as my husband would have liked. I will never forget the night that we realized that we would have to skip the hotel room and drive through the night because the road that we were driving on was a two lane winding pathway through Scotland. What looked like 2 or 3 hours on the map proved to be a 7 hour adventure. As my husband worried frantically about missing the ferry that would take us to Northern Ireland and the possibility of being late for his interview, I turned on the radio and began driving. He eventually fell off to sleep with our 7 month old, as I traveled on in the middle of the night driving on the ‘wrong’ side of a very dark, tortuous road. We landed on the docs in Stranrear, Scotland at 5am. I pulled over and enjoyed watching the sunrise before dozing off for an hour myself. My great adventure, his great nightmare!
Though at first glance, it may seem that our different coping styles make us incompatible, the exact opposite is true. If it weren’t for my husband, our NetFlix movies would never get mailed back. He is the one that holds onto the passports, birth certificates and other important documents. His ability to plan and organize is what made our transitions during residency and fellowship so much smoother. I need him….but he needs me, too. I am the one that can function when the best laid plans go astray (as they so often do). I can focus under pressure and get things done when the circumstances are less than desirable. He grounds me and makes me less emotional. I kick him in the pants and remind him that feelings are important. We make a good team.
The only thing predictable about the Match or residency training is that you will likely have to change your plans repeatedly. The Match itself provides little certainty. It can be a scary experience to open up the envelope and discover that you are going to be spending the next several years of your life in a state or town that you hadn’t imagined. The predictable nature of q3 or q4 call can throw you completely off balance because of the unpredictable human response to working so many hours on so little sleep.
Surviving the match experience and the rigors of medical training is much easier when you can handle the unpredictable changes without ripping your hair out! So here is advice on surviving the Match from a spontaneous, plan-what-must-be-planned, and hang on for the ride medical spouse:
Plan for the Predictable
The impending Match likely means that there are many changes in your future. It’s never too soon to start planning your upcoming moving timeline. Now is the time to determine whether you will want to buy or rent, and plan strategies for handling the internship year call schedule that is coming. Consider the typical issues associated with the upcoming changes in your life and prepare.
Plan for the Unthinkable
Few people actually are planning on matching at the Family Practice Residency Program in Anchorage, Alaska. If it is on your Match Rank Order List though, it is fair game. Many families have been surprised to match at their #5 or #6 choice despite good scores and great references. It’s just the nature of the matching beast! Go to the Chamber of Commerce Website for all of the places that you have ranked and prepare mentally to move to each of these locations. It will help you prepare emotionally for the unlikely event that you don’t end up where you had hoped.
Plan for your U-Haul to break down halfway between Florida and Alaska. Again, it’s an unlikely event, but if you have your paperwork stored in a bag that is readily available along with contact numbers and your credit cards, you will have a much easier time coping with the drama.
Finally, consider the most extreme unthinkable event imaginable…not matching at all or deciding to jump ship to another residency entirely. Every year, there are qualified candidates that fall victim to the imperfections of the Match. Prepare yourself for ‘Unmatch Day’ by knowing what to expect and what you may need to get through this hurdle, including use of a reliable fax machine and nerves of steel. If your spouse ends up in a residency that he despises, take comfort in the fact that others have lived through transferring. Discuss all your possibilities. You are never “stuck” although transitions can be difficult.
Plan for Reality
It’s easy to fall into a trap of underestimating travel times. Though it’s tempting to pull out the map and plan an all day trip from MN to TX with small children, the reality is that without regular breaks for the kids (and mom and dad) the traveling is likely to become a very unhappy situation. We planned a pre-fellowship trip with 3 small children and thought that stopping twice a day would be enough. After wising up and tacking an entire day onto our trip, we never made that mistake again!
Another common issue that can cause havoc is not providing yourself with enough time to accomplish all of the pre-moving tasks that need to be finished. I am guilty of underestimating the amount of time I needed to finish the packing and preparing the house for the move. When we moved after fellowship, I actually scheduled the defense of my Master’s thesis for the day that the moving truck came to pick up our boxes. In hindsight, I of course see how close I was cutting it, but at the time, I felt that I could organize things well enough to accomplish everything. The end result is that I was forced to pack all of our dirty laundry and ship it. Fortunately for me, I’m flexible enough to let this go. My husband worried the entire time that we were moving that the laundry would have to be thrown away when we arrived.
It’s important to plan for the residency training years, but it is also good to recognize that there are some things that we cannot control. Accepting that bumps in the road are just part of the roller coaster ride of medical training can be difficult, but some of life’s most wonderful moments happen when we turn off the GPS and take the road less traveled. Only then, can you sit back and enjoy the sunrise content in the belief that everything works out eventually.
