p.s. I don’t thrive on darkness and compost

June 29, 2006 at 8:21 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

So, I had my MSPE meeting with the dean of student affairs this past week. He was in a good mood, and kept telling me that neurosurgery matching was all about Step 1, and nothing else. Which isn’t quite true: it’s about Step 1 and letters and whether they can stand you hanging around for 7 years. And I’m generally pretty easy to be around, so I doubt I’ll get blackballed anywhere because of my personality.

But he seemed intent on reassuring me about my Step 1 score, which I thought was funny. Look, I know it’s fine, and that it clears the bar it needs to for neurosurgery. But I can still be annoyed that I could have scored 20 points higher on a better day, can’t I?

In any event, he asked me where I was going to apply. I listed various programs, and mentioned only one of the two programs in Houston and didn’t mention any programs in New Orleans. He seemed to think that I would want to stick around here, and I wondered how someone in his position could possibly be that far out of the loop. Surely the implosion was heard a couple states away in any direction?

The New Orleans programs are of course still on my list. But they’re more viable if they combine. I’ve been saying since I got here that’s there’s only room in this town for one academic neurosurgery program. And I’m not going to pretend I’m geographically restricted when I’m not, and the guy clearly doesn’t have the time of day for me. And if by some chance, this is an indication that he does want to fix things, then perhaps he should tell me that before talking to the dean of student affairs. It’s kind of important that I know these things.

So I’m not sure at this point who’s really the clueless one there. Although I’m clearly more clueless than both.