I leave for my interview in an hour or so. I have three resumes, I’ve de-linted my brand new suit (I was still sewing the buttons on at 11:30 last night), and I’m STILL trying to formulate a cogent answer to the question “Why do you want to be a doctor?”
Go get’em girl! Knock their socks off . . . . and if the lint from their socks hits your suit, so what?!
Kidding aside, good luck. Just be yourself. You’re a winner all on your own!
GO!
GO!
GO!
GO!
Eye of the Tiger Denise
Eye of the Tiger
GRRRRRRR
Did I miss a post somewhere??? I don’t recall even knowing you had an interview!! Great job!! Kick a$$!! 
Denise,
I’m sure you were great! (by now you should be done with it)…Let us know how it went!
Kasia
Well, MCW is very laid back about interview day. You check in, get a packet, have a brief orientation to the day, then have two 30-minute interviewers, one with a faculty member, (a Ph.D in my case) and one with a 4th year med student. Then there’s a financial aid presentation and a tour led by a student, and then a brief wrap-up and you’re out. No super-hard questions, nothing about the biggest problems facing medicine today, some hard ethical dilemma.
Oh, wait! Yes there were, from the first interviewer. It was what if I saw someone cheating? I said I was torn between whether I would rat the person out specifically or whether I would say to the proctor or the faculty member, “Gee, I think there’s some cheating going on here, you might like to look at your procedures here.” Interestingly, I said the decision to report would be easier if the cheater were a friend, because a friend who is so distressed that she is considering cheating should come to friends for help, not go straight to the cheating thing. I don’t know what that was about; it just came flying out of my mouth.
What if I saw someone stealing drugs? That was a hands-down for me, that I would report that. This is a big and known problem in medicine, there are policies and procedures in place to deal with it, and it leads directly to harm to patients and there’s no way around it, you have to report it. What if it was my best friend? Still has to be dealt with. And, I volunteered, if that friend will find out I’m the one who reported them, that’s too bad for me. I’ll have to get new friends.
He also asked me the traditional non-trad question about how I reached this path and what took me so long, only he actually said, “What took you so long?” He pushed me a little bit on the exploration of other career paths, making sure that I was not interested in counseling people but in treating them. I’m not 100% sure I connected with him on that, but I know we beat that to death in the second interview and I definitely saw her connect with my answer.
On the whole, except for the obligatory worrying about whether I said the wrong thing, I feel pretty good about the whole thing.
I would answer a lot of the routine questions (what are you proudest of?) differently if you asked them while I was driving home in the car, but I think that’s normal. I hope.
Committee meets next Thursday, letters go out Friday morning, so I can fret through the Ren Faire weekend next weekend (I’m performing in Minnesota), and by Monday, I should know.
Knock wood.
Thanks for your support!