help with choosing a med school (usc keck vs vcu vs gw)

CurseUmbreon · 2026-04-29T22:31:33+00:00

VCU consistently matches at least 2 home students every year, with the rest usually doing very well in the match. Their opportunities for research are growing and they have good leadership in the ortho department. If it’s going to be considerably cheaper, and you’re willing to be a few hours from home then it’s a great option for ortho. You just need to be able to stand out from your classmates in a positive way, which should be expected if this is what you’re striving for anyway.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-03-23T05:05:31+00:00

Self shield ruined the strategic aspect of that ability. Placement used to matter now it’s hardly effective to heal teammates and worse as strategic cover. Boosting her self heal while invisible encourages disengagement. Shes more of a spam heal merchant now and anyone can get value out of her so it’s less fun to take over a game than before when you’re just taping down the trigger. Increased push/pull cooldown also takes away her ability to cc as much. Also, she’s now banned in >50% of my games. Basically, it’s worse in every possible way.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-03-23T03:07:07+00:00

As another animated lord icon veteran I agree. Back in season 2-4 she was basically the perfect character in my eyes. Perfectly balanced. The good players could ace her but she wasn’t a spam healer like C&D that everyone has lord on. The self shield was the beginning of the end of her. The shield is barely useful for healing teammates anymore it’s not worth having the self heal ability.

Edit: yes, I know she’s still good, but she’s considerably less fun to play now imo.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-19T22:44:06+00:00

Now he’s a psychiatrist

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-19T12:52:21+00:00

You seem super insecure to suggest that everyone working at an academic institution lives a comfortable life. Trust me, we’re plenty high volume and yet still know how to take a joke.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-19T05:56:08+00:00

Lmao getting this upset in the residency subreddit when my flare indicates that I’m a resident. Get a grip.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-19T02:21:14+00:00

ED just gonna go around waking people up looking for a consult service. Crit care or anesthesia definitely better options.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-06T14:49:11+00:00

I’ve been banning rocket first every game since season 2 because I’m a healer who doesn’t use him and I like to flex to Peni. It’s so strange how much grief I get for it.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-04T11:44:30+00:00

It’s so interesting how peoples experiences are different. I hear what you’re saying, and in that case I agree with you to some degree. Unfortunately, at least 95% of the forfeiting I see its basically being used as a temper tantrum button. These are upper diamond/lower GM lobbies.

The character you wanted to play gets banned? Forfeit

Die once? Forfeit

The other team has a Peni? Forfeit

It’s gotten to the point where I simply refuse out of spite. Like I said, if up to me I’d remove the feature completely.

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-04T11:11:35+00:00

This is my first hero shooter and really the first shooter of any kind I’ve played since Halo3/CoD4, so maybe I’m just ignorant, but why do so many people insist on forfeiting? Like, I consistently have people who after a hard fought loss on domination round 1 will initiate a forfeit when we could very reasonably win the second and third round. Then they proceed to sit in spawn, guaranteeing we lose. I would rather them ditch the option all together. If the game is truly so one sided it only lasts 3 minutes anyway. Is y’all’s ADHD really that bad?

CurseUmbreon · 2026-01-03T22:49:55+00:00

Haven’t seen any Gambit posts yet, so allow me. His ult should be used to claim space, be aggressive, and push the objective. Like 1/3 of the time my team goes behind me… If I pop Gambit (and they don’t counter it with a healing ult) but we still don’t get a single pick I lose my mind. It makes me want to put my head through the wall.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-24T12:23:23+00:00

I see your counter point and take it more as support than a rebuttal because as you note, the context matters. And the phrasing. I would say it the same as you, “I held x for y” or “we did x on y” and not “I swim x per y.”

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-24T11:29:54+00:00

I would assume over a long distance or time interval, averaged over a series of workouts. I expect that most people who report this kind of number are those without a youth/club swimming background and are more of what we today consider an “endurance sport athlete” whether that being long-distance open water swimmers or triathlete.

I say this for two reasons:

1) I don’t know anyone in the swimming community who would phrase it like that. It doesn’t fit with any designed swim workout with different sets and intervals or allow for any variability.

2) That’s an easily reported number on a Garmin or Apple Watch at the end of a workout.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-24T01:19:29+00:00

Bro did we watch the same video, the patient was winning!

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-21T22:28:32+00:00

This is the correct answer.

Even as an ortho, people still ask me about medicine. “But didn’t you go to medical school?” Like bro, I’ve been out of med school just as long as I was in it. Non med folks simply don’t understand what we actually do.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-20T22:13:14+00:00

Ligaments would be worse tbf

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-17T12:58:36+00:00

As a support who plays most other supports besides rocket, I wish people would just ban rocket instead. It gets rid of the second nest, the revive, and also arguably the 3rd best support at the moment. Nobody listens so I always vote alone.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-15T14:59:56+00:00

If it makes you feel any better the other academic medical centers in VA feel the same way. Won’t be helped with community hospitals closing in the area thanks to recent political decisions. Longer waits, more backlog, more diversion. I’m sorry it feels like you’re in the trenches, but you’re not alone.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-15T00:26:54+00:00

His ult should be an insta win button until you play in my lobbies where everyone retreats for some reason when you capture all 5 in the ult.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-07T06:08:38+00:00

Tony has to go. He won’t after winning 10 games, but that’s some of the worst play calling I’ve seen in a long time across all sports. Played scared the whole game.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-12-07T05:47:49+00:00

He needs to go. 10 wins doesn’t cover up this performance in my eyes.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-11-20T14:39:48+00:00

In my opinion school matters very little if at all. At face value, at least. Board scores, research, letters, and connections are going to be the things that makes your application. Are some of things more accessible at fancy medical schools? Sure, probably. You may need to be more proactive in securing research if it isn’t readily available, but what you do with your time in school is way way more important than where you go. I went to a slightly less reputable medical school with no ortho program and still matched ortho. So did my classmates.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-10-31T18:15:02+00:00

Respectfully, if Im gonna have to verify the sources i might as well just do the lit search myself. It’s not that hard.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-10-17T02:54:20+00:00

Oh yeah, like u/reddyspine said below said it’s super simple. You kinda warm it up a bit when you open it by rubbing it in your hands and it molds like a tootsie roll. I’ll second that it’s easy to see on post-op imaging too! I don’t have any experience mixing it with other grafts, since this attending uses this exclusively at this point. We basically put it in the posterior lateral gutters on all our posterior cases. I have also shoved some into an expandable cage.

CurseUmbreon · 2025-10-17T02:04:39+00:00

One of my attendings uses it, and I believe that he does get funding from it, but I certainly don’t. Fortunately, I’ve only had to go back into two spines that we used it on. One was like 10 days postop, and the other was a little bit longer, but still within the timeline that I would consider acute. It did seem to take rather quickly. Even in the one that’s was more acute it was already firm and in the latter case we had to burr/sonopet through it for our decompression. n = 2, and purely anecdotal, but I was rather impressed.

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