2018 Reading list: 3 books in the bag

I loove love love books. I love to read. But problem is time, where is the time to read. With busy residency I come home exhausted and too tired to pick up a book. Of course some months are better than others. I'm currently on a two weeks staycation - vacation spent at home and in my city- and I'm enjoying just relaxing. Up till now I've read 3 books two for fun and one to work on a skill.

1) The House of God by Samuel Shed: This details the ordeals of a intern in a hospital called the House of God. Its true depiction of life as an intern, sharing not only what happens to the interns, how they react to it, but also how they feel emotionally and physically. After 6 months in my intern year I can say there are quite a few things that I saw happened to me as well. I did not agree with some of the protagonists -the authors- conclusions. Still its a great book if you want to get an insight as to how Intern year is.
2) Speed Reading: How to double (or triple) your reading speed in just 1 hour!  by Justin Hamond: This book was a quick read. I always wanted to improve my reading speed. I thought the book was short and to the point. While I do not think my reading speed improved in 1 hour I think I with practicing the tips in the book will rev up my reading speed.
3) Pimp, the story of my life - by Iceberg Slim: I first heard about this book while watching a Dave Chapelle skit. An ex pimp looks back on his life and gives vivid details of the horrific things he did to others or that were done him. It reads like a movie. At the end of this book I question whether these events really happened because some of these things seemed so inordinate, or extraordinary or outlandish.


I have already read 3 of the 6 books that I plan on reading this year.

The year 2017 in review and plans/goals for 2018

1/8/2018

FINALLY A BREAK. Today is the first day of my very first vacation in Residency. Its been 6 months of growth and managing patients. I started residency in 7/1/17 and it has been go go go. I haven’t had the time to sit down and analyze what I will be doing, what my plans will be for this new year, and what look at what I accomplished last year. I’m going to take a look at my resolutions from last year and see how things panned out. Dun dun dun dun dun.

“In 2017, my goal is to match into a good residency program, to give a speech in front of a high school students, make more youtube videos, compete in the World championship of public speaking, and give you readers more value by blogging about the standardized exams that Medical students and Residents face.”

The year 2016 in review and plans for 2017

I did match into a great residency program! Yay! I did compete in the world championship of public speaking however I did not make it to the finally stages. I blogged decently until I started residency and it happened far and in between. Out of the minimum of 13 books that I was supposed to read – because I read about 3 books and am literally past the half way point of 3 other books. As for giving a speech in front of large crowds that has not happened yet.

This year I will carry over the things that I was not able to accomplish plus add a few more. For the things I was not able to accomplish I will set the bar a little lower so that I can accomplish them. The idea being so long as I can get the ball rolling and stay consistent I will more likely to follow through. This way of thinking has served me well through out my years. Enough rambling…

My goals for this year are

      1 )      HIT 400’s in the ITE exam. I got a 370 and that was with no studying.

      2)     Read 6 books. I tried to read more than a book a year, however, that didn’t pan out in 2017 because of my busy schedule. 6 books a year is not too bad and it will be more than the 3 books I read last year.

      3)      Volunteer work. I want to volunteer. I did look for different sites where I can volunteer maybe in a soup kitchen but all these places required you to fill out all these forms. I put it off till next tiem and the next time never came. I will try to get on it this time.

      4)      Giving speeches to the youth. I would like to motivate and inspire young minds, to held set them up for a successful life in regards economics/finances/attaining their goals. I’m still trying to figure out how I will get this accomplished

      5)      Blog at between 6 -12 x this year. This bar is really low. Looool. It’ll definitely be cathartic but hopefully serve some value to whoever reads this.
      6) Buy an apartment

Will review again in 3 months – March. 

Selecting a program to apply to PART 3

This is the method that I myself used in applying to programs. I am not saying that this is the best way to select programs to apply to, however I had certain restrictions; I'm not made of money, loool. My goal was to find programs whose criteria I met.  Below are the steps that I followed:

1) got a list on matcharesident that was based on my scores
2) I looked through all of these and picked only the programs that had about 50% imgs in their program
3) took a list of all the programs that are in my state and added it to the list from matcharesident
4) After that I went to the website of each of these programs and combed through the information there. Most programs list what they are looking for. I made sure I fit their criteria. I had a CS failure so all the programs that insisted on having a one time pass I took them off my list, unless I had a specific reason to still apply and try my luck.

At the end of these steps, while my goal was to apply to 200 programs, I found only 130 that passed my filters. I applied and the rest is history.

The end goal of applying is to match so use the best method that in your opinion will put your application in front of programs that will like you AND you will like. Plan out how you will apply, do not just pick randomly. Of the three methods -1) applying to every program in your specialty, 2) applying to programs that alumni from your school matched in, 3) using the filters I mentioned- none of them are right or wrong. Pick the one that suits you best.

Selecting the right programs to apply to PART 2

Are you ready for ways to select programs to apply to number 2. The first method is one that I mentioned in the prior post. The second method is one that another friend used. He was able to get a decent amount of interviews that way.

The method he applied to places that graduates from my school applied to. The wonderful thing about our school in particular is that they keep a record or list of places that the schools graduates matched into. He combed through those records and selected some to apply to.

The good things about this method is that he got a lot of interviews. Now, it could also be linked to not having a single failure on his step exams on his record so take it with a grain of salt. Secondly, he saved money since he did not apply to every program in his specialty. Applying to about 200 programs means you will spend about 5000$. Imagine family medicine has upwards of 400 programs and you want to apply to all of them. Lastly, if you know the person that matched into the program they could put in a good word for you.

The cons of this method is you are limited to places where your fellow graduates matched into. You might miss out on places where you might be a good fit. Also, its tedious going through program by program.

Which programs should one apply to: Method 1

Imagine you send out your application only to programs that don't like you as an applicant... Exactly, you will wasting your time.  Picking the right mix of programs to apply to is almost as important is it is to make sure you have a solid application. I will be sharing with you 3 ways you can select which programs you can apply to. Two of the ways were used by my friends and one was the way I used.

As a quick side note: none of these methods are fool proof. Also this is not a discussion on which specialties you should apply to. That is an entirely different topic.

The method I will be discussing today was used by a friend when he was applying. I've also heard of other people using this method. 

The good thing about this method is that it includes all of the programs that could possibly like you, every single one of them. It might be the safest bet when it comes to applying.

The bad thing about this method is that it includes all of the programs that do not  like you. It is also the most expensive way of applying so it is not a method that everyone can use. 

Whats the method? If you haven't figured it out as of now, it is applying to every single program in the specialty you want. If your specialty has 400 programs then you apply to 400 hundred programs. If it has 250 programs you apply to 250 programs. 

Whether you will use this method or not usually depends on the availability of money. If you have the money to cover the cost of applying to that many programs then you can try using this method. However, not many people have that kind of cash lying around, and I am certainly not one of these kinds of people. I personally had to find a way to filter my programs so that I could afford it. 

Next post: Which programs to apply to: method 2