Kara Pflaster is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine.
In the following blog post, as one of tens of thousands of graduating medical students nationwide waiting to learn on Match Day where they will continue their training after earning their degrees, she reflects on what the waiting period is like for students on the cusp of this milestone.
“Match Day feels like the last mountain of medical school. For four years, it’s loomed quietly in the background. Every year I’ve watched Match Day and thought about what it will be like when I get to that point. And now, suddenly, it is here.”
Mastering Moguls
I’ve been skiing a lot lately, in true Vermont fashion. The age-old promise that the second half of fourth year is the “promised land” has turned out to be true, at least for me. Sorry to all my friends currently on surgical rotations. For what it’s worth, the snow in Japan was really good last week.
When I was eight years old, I moved from San Diego to Vermont and learned how to ski for the first time. As a bumps and trees enthusiast, my dad believed strongly in slope-side character development. Thus, my weekends became a ritual: lining up for the first chair, nibbling beef jerky handed down from a ski jacket pocket like some kind of alpine sacrament, and trying valiantly to convince my dad to buy my sister and me fries and hot chocolate from the Mad River Lodge. We were rarely successful.
Moguls, however, were both reliably present and horrifying. Despite aggressive encouragement and questionable tactical advice from my dad, I never seemed to find the right path through them. Rocks, trees, and ice each added chaos into the mix. Skiing moguls felt less like a sport and more like an extended negotiation for my own survival.
But there was one day where it finally clicked. I was standing at the top of Middle Earth, a famously gnarly run off Sugarbush’s Castlerock lift. The moguls were covered in ice. Rocks peeked through the snow. There were patches of dirt in the middle of the trail, which is never reassuring when your primary objective is just to stay upright.
Below me, my dad yelled, “Attack the mountain, Kara! Don’t let the mountain attack you!”
And somehow, miraculously, I was finally able to find my line through the bumps down to the bottom.
The Last Mountain of Medical School
You may see where I’m going with this.
Attacking the mountains of medical school has required the same grit and determination I first learned on those icy mogul runs. Step 1. Step 2. Clinical rotations. “Read my mind” questions. The hidden curriculum of knowing the perfect playlist for when your Orthopedics attending says “Let’s let the medical student pick the music today.” For the record, this is a high-stakes scenario. Too mellow? You’re boring. Too intense? You’re a gunner. Now everyone knows I’m into yacht rock. There is no safe choice, only vibes and consequences.
Medical school, like skiing, is humbling. There are stretches when you feel unstoppable, gracefully carving down groomers. And then there are stretches where you find yourself limping to your car after feeling too embarrassed to call ski patrol and ask for help. Terrain changes. Visibility shifts and your goggles fog up.
Occasionally (ok, I’ll admit, more often than just occasionally), you hit a patch of ice, lose all your wits, and your last brain cell finally up and quits. Still, you keep going because in the midst of all this, this is what you love to do.
Match Day feels like the last mountain of medical school. For four years, it’s loomed quietly in the background. Every year I’ve watched Match Day and thought about what it will be like when I get to that point. And now, suddenly, it is here. Acting internships, personal statements, applications ($$), interviews (including constant anxiety if the interviewers thought I was cool, normal, and funny). And then…three months of waiting.
The Skill of Waiting
Anyone in healthcare understands waiting is both torturous and a hard-learned skill. We wait for labs. We wait for that final CT scan read. We practice watchful waiting. We learn, sometimes painfully, the best thing we can do for a patient seems to be nothing at all. As someone who has sporadically found myself on the Yelp reviews page for the hospital, to anyone outside of medicine reading this: when I say, “do nothing,” please know this is not laziness. It is not indifference. The discernment required not to cut, not to intervene, not to disrupt the body’s ability to heal itself is one of the most important skills we learn. First, do no harm.
Still, despite my appreciation for the value of waiting, March 20th cannot come soon enough. Here is a partial list of things I have done while hurrying up and waiting:
- Knit two sweaters, a scarf, and three pairs of mittens (If you can’t tell, I went to a Waldorf school)
- Skied in Japan for two weeks (I won’t continue to say how good the snow was)
- Cold plunged in the lake (I’m not crazy, I swear)
- Tried cross-country skiing for the first time (this was where I understood what a newborn baby giraffe must feel like)
- Watched five close friends get engaged (to each of them, I gave my parents’ home address because wedding invites do not wait for Match Day results)
This season of waiting has confirmed something important about myself, which is that I would much rather be busy than bored. Thankfully, this bodes well for residency. Most days, I try to enjoy this strange stretch of time. This rare pause between who I’ve been and who I’m becoming. But some days, if I’m being completely honest here, I just don’t know what to do with myself. There’s a certain beauty in that, where you feel like anything is possible, but after years of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, anything less than chaos feels out of place.
I Will Get Down that Mountain
Growing up, my dad had a phrase he loved to repeat. “Kara, everything always works out.” And look, so far it has! Like, I am going to be a doctor. That alone feels wildly improbable and deeply meaningful (my own version of the Olympics, I suppose). But where will I be a doctor? Who will I get to be a doctor with? Will I learn how to be the best doctor I can be?
“Everything always works out” is easy to say, hard to believe, and even harder to relax after I hear my dad say this. Yet deep down, I know he’s right. It will work out. Even if it’s not the prettiest run. Even if there are rocks. Even if there’s ice. Even if I lose all my gear and absolutely just yard sale. Because in the end, I will get down that mountain.
So, now like every fourth-year medical student across the country, I’m waiting for the day when a room full of wildly capable people collectively hold envelopes containing the next chapter of our lives. Personally, I know I will be holding my envelope up to the light to try and see through it (don’t worry, I didn’t apply into Radiology).
On our way to becoming good physicians, we’ve also become better teammates, better friends, and better humans. In a world full of uncertainty, I know wherever we land, we’ll show up, take care of people, and figure it out. Just like we always have.
And to my classmates, when we finally open that envelope, I hope you’ll think like my dad: breathe in, point your skis downhill, and attack the mountain.
