The Match (part two)

This hasn't been the easiest year in some ways. After more than a decade in Champaign-Urbana, I am heavily embedded in the community. My church is very happy with me, the two choral organizations for which I regularly accompany and their members are also pleased with our relationship, personal as well as professional, and nobody wants to see us go.

But for the better part of the last year, that's just what we've been preparing for. I've already detailed the mechanics of the match program Kristen is a part of in which she will find, once she graduates in May with an MD, where she will spend the next four or five years in residency to learn her specialty. It is certainly going to be in another location, and will almost certainly require a move there in June, at which point I'll be looking for new jobs in a new community. In the meantime, people have been asking me, individually, sometimes cheerfully, as this must be so much fun for us (!) where we are going to move to and have we heard anything yet.

The answer has always been the same. March 18th. They won't tell us before then. It doesn't matter how often you ask, or how much we wish we knew. It is just going to be that way. And don't you think we'll make an announcement when we know something?

But that hasn't stopped people from asking, over and over, and getting the same answer. And people being in various shades of denial and hope that we'll either find a way to stay, or at least commute. The first is a very outside possibility, and would only involve one year in a 'prelim' program which is the way of the one specialty that Kristen has decided against--with a single exception, way down the rank order list. As for the second--well, sure, I wouldn't mind coming back occasionally, but even commuting regularly from Indianapolis, the closest possibility, is not very realistic. And from the east coast?

In the meantime, everything is speculation. But it all comes to an end at 11am on Friday. Two days from now we will finally have an answer to a very important question, and when I am stupid enough to mention to a stranger that we are moving and get the inevitable follow-up "where to?" I'll actually be able to answer.

The Match ceremony will actually involve envelopes, which are opened apparently on some signal from the host, and en masse, rather than the more drawn out method some schools employ wherein each candidate is called to the stage one at a time, opens the envelope and announces to everybody "I'm taking my talents to South Beach!"*

I've joked that it will be broadcast on ESPN 7, but there really will be live web streaming involved, so if you happen to know us and want to get the 5 minute jump before Kristen puts it on Facebook, you can tune in to the college of medicine's youtube channel right HERE.

go.illinois.edu/matchday16#sthash.0hRt0L5h.dpuf

I'll post it to the blog Friday also, so whether you wanted to know or not, after the regular column gets its post at 8am Friday it will be followed by a short announcement some three or four hours later stating laconically where we are going to move. I'll put it on Facebook also. And for those who aren't connected, there will be live announcements at my church this weekend (all services) and Chorale rehearsal Sunday evening. Just so we can cover as may of the 5 or 600 people that we run into on a weekly basis as possible.



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*If you grew up in the Cleveland area, that phrase really stings.