Advice for Third Years

Now’s the time to get your foot in the door. Doing well on your rotations is a given. What we’re talking about is FACE TIME with docs in your desired subspecialty.

Face time is just good old-fashioned familiarity. It’s about YOU getting to know THEM, yes. But more importantly, it’s about THEM getting to know YOU!

Face time will create letters of recommendation, phone calls in your favor and a general positive vibe about you in the ‘small world’ of your subspecialty. People talk, and you want them to be saying good things about you. Here’s how:

• Show up: find out where and when the morning conferences are for your subspecialty… and GO TO THEM. This may mean waking up at “o’dark-thirty,” but it’ll be worth it. You don’t have to say a word. That’s the beauty of face time. It’s just about your face, and your time, not your brain!

• Take advantage of electives. Electives should be spread out among things you want to learn more about, but they should definitely include some in your subspecialty. This adds a big plus in the face time column. You should try to do two of these: one at the beginning of the year, and one at the end.

• Knock on a few doors. And send some emails to set up meetings with the program director. You should also get to know an ‘advisor,’ for that extra bit of guidance. Ideally, you’ll get a letter from the director and one from your advisor (just as long as you’ve done some good FACE TIME).

• Do some research. Ask your advisor and director for some extra work. Sometimes, you’ll end up doing some lit search scut-work that doesn’t amount to a paper, but even that’s worth something. If you keep begging for research, some will come your way. Ask the residents as well, and they might let you pick up their scraps (case-reports, etc.)

• The residents are your allies. If they like you, they’ll spread the positive vibe. You’ll get to know them at conferences and rotations, just through good old-fashioned (you guessed it) FACE TIME!

Simple, but true. Sometimes, all you gotta do is just show up.