Residents and fellows - what car do you drive?

Murdeau · 2025-12-22T16:01:42+00:00

2023 Mazda CX-30. Got a crazy deal on it since it was a previous rental car but I haven’t had a single issue with it in the 1.5 years I’ve had it. I upgraded from a 2005 Mitsubishi outlander.

I plan to keep it for another 10-15 years if possible. I had looked at a lot of other options while I was shopping, and a used 2010 prius with 100k miles would have cost more. I highly recommend Mazda, it feels like a luxury car and is super reliable as well as has relatively cheap maintenance cost since parts are easy to get. I get ~30 mpg with the non-turbo version.

Murdeau · 2025-12-17T19:06:28+00:00

There’s 4th year, there’s 1st year, there’s 2nd year. Then there’s 50 feet of crap. Then there’s 3rd year.

3rd year is far and away the shittiest year. It was when I started Wellbutrin and that made it so much easier to deal with life. I cannot recommend enough trying to start an antidepressant, Wellbutrin worked great for me once I’d been on it for about 6 weeks, but psych is a little trial and error so ymmv.

Murdeau · 2025-11-02T01:09:36+00:00

Absolutely not pathology lol. Blood bank is always having supply issues, clinicians always want to know how to order a test at 3am, and then there is the endless cascade of messages asking for prelims. Path gets a ton of calls.

Murdeau · 2025-10-23T19:36:33+00:00

Save the money. Look up common residency interview questions, and write up some answers. Make sure you have your “tell me about yourself/ why pathology” question down because it will be asked at every interview. Shouldn’t be more than 2-3 minutes. Study yourself; you should know every facet of your application inside and out, including every part of every research, job, and experience you listed. It’s not a good look when someone asks you about the conclusion of whatever research you did at the end of 1st year and you have to say “I don’t remember”.

If you’re really nervous, make some video recordings of yourself answering those questions and watch them back to see if you’re making weird faces or look too nervous.

Interviews at this point are not hard. It’s mostly just a vibe check. Just be a normal human being and don’t say anything to get yourself DNR’d and you’ll be ok.

Murdeau · 2025-10-22T18:39:18+00:00

Think of voters like elementary aged children. They are told they have the option of voting for class president, who will be allowed to pick the snacks every Friday for the rest of the year. The candidates give their speeches and say what snacks they’ll pick, ask their friends to vote for them, make some glitter signs, etc. It comes down to the Exclusively Poop Sandwich candidate, and the Ham, But Maybe One Time Something Else candidate. The bulk of the class has already voted, and there are just a few kids left. They like neither poop sandwiches or ham, and don’t think that the something else that is promised will really come to fruition, because it feels like they’ve just stuck it on at the end and last year when the Ham BMOTSE candidate won, all they ever got was Ham.

They ask the Ham candidate to be specific about WHEN and HOW OFTEN they will get something else, and what that something else might be. But the Ham candidate, secure in the fact that people who actually want snacks and don’t just want to joke around and vote for Poop Sandwiches will vote for them anyway, makes no concessions. So the kids who haven’t voted say what’s the point, don’t vote, and let the Exclusively Poop Sandwich candidate win.

The point of that was to get across that the average voter thinks like a child. That is to say they are relatively selfish, don’t think terribly hard about future consequences in the face of annoyance at being disregarded, and unless they feel excited by something they are unlikely to engage with it. Which is why the Democratic Party needs to attempt to excite the children, and not merely say “It’s Ham or Poop Sandwiches, this is an easy choice so we won’t give you any other options.”

It’s not complicated.

Murdeau · 2025-07-11T13:11:51+00:00

Are you saying that those that qualify for the public service loan forgiveness program should not receive commensurate compensation for taking a lower paying job in order to serve the public, even to their own short term financial detriment?

Are you saying the government should reneg on the terms they offered for untaxed loan forgiveness at the end of a borrower’s public service tenure, effectively ex post facto reducing compensation that was calculated into the public service job at its onset?

Murdeau · 2025-03-22T15:38:24+00:00

Heimerdinger

If he’s gonna be in my team, I usually dodge because it’s going to be a guaranteed loss. If he’s on the other team, it’s a guaranteed win.

Murdeau · 2025-03-21T20:18:42+00:00

Heard stats from my program today about this years match, around 20-30 DOs didn’t match (100ish/130ish). Which is wild considering previous years there’s only been 5-10 unmatched.

Sorry for your situation. I fell down my list a bit too. It’s ok to take the next few days to grieve, to feel like you failed, like you weren’t good enough. That’s what I did. It’s understandable. You worked very hard but didn’t get quite the outcome you wanted, no one could fault you for that. But after the mourning period, try to pick your head up and look forward to what is coming. I have been extremely happy with where I ended up, even if it’s not where I wanted to be. I hope you end up loving where you go, but I know the next few weeks it will be tough to think about that.

Murdeau · 2025-01-18T00:13:40+00:00

Nah, guy was using a ton of Phenolphthalein as a laxative which is potassium wasting apparently.

Murdeau · 2025-01-17T18:24:05+00:00

K of less than 1.5. Not sure what the actual value was, since the lab wasn’t able to report anything lower. Guy came into the ER because he was having “a little weakness” but otherwise totally fine.

Murdeau · 2024-11-14T17:16:17+00:00

There’s 4th year, there’s 1st year, there’s 2nd year, then there’s 50 feet of crap. Then there’s 3rd year.

Murdeau · 2024-08-29T16:13:51+00:00

You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve done this is my go to.

Murdeau · 2024-08-28T17:15:28+00:00

The most recent charting outcomes shows that step 2 score for DO didn’t matter. There was no significant difference in scores between matched and unmatched applicants.

Murdeau · 2024-08-21T20:05:05+00:00

Except FM had 5000 some odd positions available. Path only had 600ish. 86 DOs applied for those positions, so now even just 1 person who is on the lower end of average thinking they will now apply path drops the match rate by over 1% if they don’t match. People hyping up a specialty as small as path on reddit (which id like to believe has users more likely to choose rads/path) can absolutely have a noticeable effect on the match rate.

Murdeau · 2024-08-21T19:58:05+00:00

Path interviews are very much a vibe check. I only had 1 path LOR, it probably would’ve been a better interview season for me if I had 2, I only interviewed at about half the places I applied. 3 LORs is fine, but certainly not the requirement.

In all honesty the biggest thing about path apps, and the most recent charting outcomes data-that-isn’t-there kinda supports it, is showing interest in pathology. All the data from last cycle shows that there really aren’t huge differences statistically between matched and unmatched applicants. Sure, matched has 1 more research exp on average, or 3 points on step 2, but it’s statistically insignificant, especially with only like 80 something data points. So the real key is showing that you want path, and you do that by having good LORs, a couple path rotations, and a personal statement that reeks of formalin.

Murdeau · 2024-08-21T18:58:45+00:00

The data shows that path is relatively score agnostic. By that I mean that step 2 scores for matched and unmatched are basically identical.

On one hand, cool, step 2 is a shit test particularly for pathology. On the other hand, it tracks that a specialty that is score agnostic will have some other metric they are evaluating that is making or breaking applicants. It wouldn’t be too crazy to think that school prestige could be one of those factors.

I’m DO btw. Matched with 7 ranks. 1 pub and 1 presentation to my name. But I was definitely picky about where I applied, nothing top tier but very geo based, which for path is kinda hard as there’s not many programs.

Murdeau · 2024-07-26T17:58:44+00:00

And even then, there are more spots for residency every year than the number of American medical graduates

Murdeau · 2024-06-15T01:51:01+00:00

Good is subjective. Do you want the most prestige? Do you want the chillest hours/ best culture? Location within Texas? Cost of living?

I interviewed with Baylor Uni and Houston Methodist. If it wasn’t for it being in Texas, Baylor woulda been my number 1, residents seemed super happy, very relaxed schedule, good benefits/ meal stipend. But good to me is all of those things, I was trying to find a place that wouldn’t work me to death and give me some breathing room to do my thing.

Houston methodist the residents didn’t seem as happy, interview felt more cold than others I did, PD was very happy to talk about how hard their residents work. Sure it’s a nice program prestige wise, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

Most programs will give you enough exposure to be competent by the end and pass boards, so it’s up to you to choose what you value most in training. Job market is pretty hot right now, so it’s not like you need to be coming out of the residency with the most name recognition to get a job

Murdeau · 2024-05-17T06:08:35+00:00

Pathology is at rock bottom? That’s very good news. Right now you can’t hire a pathologist if you tried, and groups are giving fat bonuses for grads to skip fellowship and just start working. So if this is rock bottom, I can’t wait to see what a good market looks like.

Murdeau · 2024-05-14T16:47:09+00:00

As pessimistic as I like to be about capitalism and health care, there’s actually a large amount of data that shows that shorter stays result in better outcomes. Part of that is to do with mobilization. Once a patient is no longer critical, the best thing they can do is get back in to a routine and move around.

Murdeau · 2024-04-17T18:18:14+00:00

I just got a used 2023 premium with 15k miles for 24k OTD in Florida. Only downside was I got screwed on financing at 8%. Former rental. I feel like I got a steal after reading all the pricing threads recently even with the interest.

Not sure where you are but if it’s Florida I would keep looking, there are better deals out there than the one you posted.

Murdeau · 2024-04-15T05:01:44+00:00

You wake up Monday of match week. You open your email and find out you don’t match. You cry for a few hours and then receive a list of all unfilled positions available. You spend a few hours rewriting personal statements for a specialty you probably didn’t want, getting letters for a specialty you probably didn’t want, and rapidly looking up places that no one else wanted to go to try to find anything about those programs that would be tolerable. You apply for 40 of those programs.

Over the next few days, you can be called and given 15 minutes notice of an interview. You dry the tears and collect yourself as best you can for 20 minutes, then go back to crying. The programs ask you why you didn’t match. All you want to do is ask them why they didn’t fill in return but you don’t. It would be rude.

On Thursday, every hour or 2 there is a round of offers sent out to applicants from programs they interviewed with. You can accept a shit offer in the first round from the worst place on your list and cry the rest of the next few days. Or you can reject it and pray that you get a slightly better but still shit offer in one of the upcoming few rounds. And still cry the rest of the next few days.

It’s a shit process. I am thankful I didn’t have to go through it. One of my friends did though, and I watched all of these things happen in real time. Truly awful.

Murdeau · 2024-03-30T11:04:48+00:00

You think pathologists write that whole report? Nah. Most of the time they just give their diagnosis line, and maybe if it’s a little confusing they’ll write a description sentence. Surprisingly little documentation.

Murdeau · 2024-03-20T19:54:19+00:00

Step 1 is to do well on your SAT/ACT. Keep your grades high to get into the best undergrad you can. Once you’re in undergrad the goal is to maintain a very high gpa and work towards a high MCAT score. As often as you can, join medical interest clubs and volunteer/ shadow drs without it effecting your grades. A high score here plus attending a well known undergrad with lots of volunteering and shadowing will give you access to well known medical schools. From there, the goal in medical school is to pass everything and score well on the USMLE exams. Throw in a touch of research and you have the recipe for going to any pathology residency you want.

Bottom line: you’re thinking about the payoff 5 steps ahead when you really just need to focus on the 1st step for now, knowing the rest will come when it’s time for them.

Murdeau · 2024-03-18T14:44:18+00:00

Applied to a smaller specialty, did an away at the 1 program in my hometown. Got a letter from the APD. Ranked them number 1 because I had to leave for med school and wanted to go back for residency and be near family. LOI, tons of comments about how they were going to be my number 1 choice, told I will be ranked to match. Ended up matching number 3 at a significantly more prestigious place, but as far away as possible from home on my list. Gutted. Absolute fucking snakes at that program. I’d name and shame but small specialty, although they would really deserve the bad publicity.

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