I have been informed that, because I am from Europe, “it all comes easy to me.” I likewise was told that, because I have a family, I would most likely not relocate so my application was not to be treated seriously. (Who would have guessed that I was just kidding around after having invested about $10,000 into the process?)
I dreaded the obligatory “describe your weakness” question and never could quite come up with the optimal answer. The interview preparation websites suggest that you try to find a “weakness” that could be interpreted as a professional strength, i.e. “I often sacrifice my personal time because I adore working long hours.” It seems to me that this is a pretty standard question for many professional interviews, so it is not a bad idea to practice being creative in that regard. I was puzzled when well-meaning coaches kept harping that I must just “be myself.” I really believe that no one—other than, perhaps, our mothers—really would like to see our true selves at an interview. So, I developed my own take on it: we should strive to present our best self, the self that we try to perfect from birth, the self that we strived to improve in the wake of poor evaluations during residency’s clinical rotations.
During several of my interviews, it seemed that clinical practice was often viewed as being far less important than research experience. While considering myself to be a clinical fellow, I look forward to the research aspect of both my training specifically and the field in general. I do not presume that treating patients must deprive the physician of professional development and intellectual discovery. Since becoming an attending, I continued several writing projects with my residents, remained an active observer of patient behaviors, and became an astute student of more medical, sociological, and psychiatric illnesses than I ever intended to recognize.
A Choice of Rheumatology
And, of course, without support from my family, praise from some patients, and observations of random strangers, I would not be where I am today. At some point during the interview process, I was waiting at a train station near a gentleman who was sitting and reading his paper. We started chatting. When he found out the specialty for which I was interviewing, he said, “It is an obscure, but at the same time very important, field.” I paused, because that was probably the last thing I wanted to hear after a stressful day, running on coffee and adrenaline, and facing a tiring six hours of travel before I could get back home. Obscure? Initially I was taken aback. But, upon further reflection, I realized that he was very kind and his observation was not at all demeaning. Yes, rheumatology treats rare and uncommon conditions. But, while most doctors know how to recognize a heart attack, not many know how to recognize RS3PE or multicentric reticulohistiocytosis.
