The public Match Day celebrations aren't for everyone. Haidn Foster, MD had a low-key Match Day experience and offers insight on the pros of that approach.
The public Match Day celebrations aren't for everyone. Haidn Foster, MD, had a low-key Match Day experience and offers insight on the pros of that approach.
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Dr. Foster: Follow your heart, follow what feels right to you, because ultimately this is your day.
Unger: That was Dr. Haidn Foster, a second-year internal medicine resident at Penn State Health.
Dr. Foster: And while you may have certain pressures or expectations from family and friends who want to celebrate your success, realize that everybody comes into Match Day with different experiences.
Unger: On this episode of Making the Rounds, Dr. Foster shares how he celebrated his Match Day a little unconventionally and how other residency applicants should feel empowered to do what feels best for them on a day filled with so much pressure. Here’s AMA senior news writer, Brendan Murphy.
Murphy: Hello and welcome to Making the Rounds. I'm Brendan Murphy, senior news writer at the AMA. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Haidn Foster, a second-year internal medicine resident at Penn State Health. He is an AMA member and holds the position of chair elect and delegate for the Resident and Fellows section. How are you doing today, Dr. Foster?
Dr. Foster: I'm doing well. Thanks, Brendan. It's good to be here with you.
Murphy: We're glad to have you. And today, we're going to talk about how M4s can do Match Day their way. And to be more specific about that topic, we know that some schools have Match Day parties or group activities that center around opening your Match envelope. We'd like to hear your advice to our listeners on deciding what's best for them on Match Day. For many students, that day can have a lot of pressure behind it as we all know. So, I think a good place to start is, can you tell us how you spent your Match Day?
Dr. Foster: Absolutely. Well, I took a bit of an unconventional approach to how I celebrated my Match Day, which was in thinking about what sort of format would work best for me, knowing myself and knowing kind of all of the pressure surrounding that day as you alluded to. I felt like it would be best for me to celebrate my Match Day in private. And so, I stayed home and learned the news by myself. Then later felt like I was able to share the results of my Match and proceed with all of the celebrations and things like that inherent to Match Day.
Murphy: Why was that the right decision for you? What were the advantages to doing Match Day in private? And when you say in private, do you mean just you and your apartment, how'd you process?
Dr. Foster: Yeah, that's right. So it was me at home alone, me and my plants. And I think some of the advantages that I saw to celebrating Match Day in private were really to preserve my own mental health at a time that. Again, as we talked about, it's really emotionally fraught. There are a lot of pressures and weight of expectations. Even though everyone comes to this time in a feeling of celebration and happiness for themselves as people who are matching and also their families and friends who only want the best for them and want to see them succeed. And yet with that kind of weight of expectations with your loved ones there and your colleagues, your friends in medical school, I think there's often a sense that you have to calibrate your authentic reaction to meet others' expectations. And you have to sort of prepare yourself for that in advance of opening your envelope. And I didn't want anything getting in the way of me processing my feelings during Match in an authentic way. So being able to take that time for myself and then choose how I wanted to share that news in a way that felt right for me was really important.
Murphy: What did you do after you got the news? Who was your first call? Did you take a while just to be alone?
Dr. Foster: Yeah. Well, my first call was actually a call that I received by my program director who was going through the list of all the people who had ended up matching at now my current residency program. And I think I threw her a little bit off guard because I think most people that she called on that day didn't answer their phones because they were busy with their own Match celebrations. And so, I answered and it was a really nice welcome to the residency program that I'm now attending. And a nice way to sort of celebrate the news in a way that was low stakes that allowed me to talk with somebody who obviously was very intimately involved with the program. And then later on, of course, my first call was to my parents and told them about the news. We celebrated sort of virtually because I went to medical school in Cincinnati, whereas my parents were back in Seattle. And then proceeded to, again, sort of take that time and celebrate later on with some of my friends from medical school, again, in a virtual setting. I took a year to perform research at the National Institutes of Health during medical school. And so, by the time of my Match Day, most of my friends had actually already matched and graduated and moved on to their different residency programs across the country. But it was really nice to be able to then connect back up with them, celebrate in a virtual format and be able to all kind of relive that Match experience together.
Murphy: The public Match Day celebration wasn't for you. Do you see any pros to that for some people?
Dr. Foster: Yeah, I think there are a lot of pros actually to a public Match celebration. But it just depends on your own personality as the medical student going through the Match. So, for a lot of people who may be a little bit more introverted, who have feelings about how they want to display their emotions or celebrate in public versus more private settings. You know, a public Match may not be the right thing for those students, but for students who are excited to discover where they matched along with all of their family and friends all at the same time, there's a lot to be said for being able to celebrate in that communal fashion altogether. Because that's an experience that even if you end up celebrating later, you can't fully recreate if you decide to learn about your own Match in private and then celebrate later.
Murphy: So, you celebrated in your apartment in a bit of a quieter way. Do you know of any other students who did something a little off the beaten path for their Match Day?
Dr. Foster: Yeah, so I don't know of any of my peers doing some really off the beaten path things like I've heard over social media. But one of the things that I really appreciated about the medical school that I attended was that over time, they really have adapted their Match Day celebration in response to student feedback to allow students to learn about where they match and then celebrate in a way that feels right and authentic to them. And so, you know, previously, that meant calling students up one by one onto stage, played in by their own personal song, opening the envelope on stage in front of all their classmates and friends, and announcing where they matched to residency. And that's not necessarily the way that all medical schools celebrate their residency Match Day. But that was historically how my medical school handled it. And as you might imagine, that is quite a daunting prospect for many students. And so, over the last several years, they adapted that Match Day celebration to a sort of pick your own adventure where you could choose to open your envelope offstage with your friends and just keep that a sort of pseudo private celebration. You could open your envelope before then deciding that you wanted to go up on stage and announce where you matched. Or you could grab your envelope in the morning, go back home or go to wherever you chose to open it and celebrate in whatever way you saw fit.
And so, I think seeing the different medical schools beyond just my own, adapting the different ways in which they allow students to celebrate Match Day in a way that feels right for them is a really important development over the past several years that was kind of spurred on by the pandemic. But like so many changes to the residency interview and Match process has really found its footing in terms of being a really beneficial change that students can take and make their own.
Murphy: On Match Day, did you allow yourself a grace period or did you start to think about some of the logistics of residency that very day? You mentioned you spoke to your program director.
Dr. Foster: I definitely started thinking about logistics. I didn't know if I was going to match somewhere near my home institution where I went to medical school, if I was going to match somewhere closer to home where my family lived or in the Washington state area, or if I was gonna match somewhere else like Hershey, Pennsylvania, where I'd never visited before. And so, knowing then that I matched in a town that I hadn't visited, that I didn't know the layout for, that I didn't have a sense for the rental market and things like that. I did start thinking about all of those different logistics, even though, you know, I probably didn't need to start thinking about it right then. You can't help but have those thoughts cross your mind of, okay, where am I gonna live for the next three years? How am I going to navigate signing a lease with a property that I may not have seen previously? How close or far do I want to live from the hospital? Those sorts of things.
Murphy: You have designs on pursuing a fellowship. Fellowships have a Match Day. It's through the NRMP. It's a very similar process. How do you plan on spending your fellowship Match Day?
Dr. Foster: Yeah. So, while the process is sort of the same, the actual circumstances around fellowship match are quite different, between applying and matching to fellowship versus residency. So, I'll likely be on service. And that's a way in which fellowship Match Day is quite different to the residency Match Day. When you're applying to fellowship, you're working a job as opposed to going to school. And the way that residency is set up is not necessarily like medical school where you can schedule light rotations or have time off sort of towards the end of medical school, it's not really the same for applying to fellowship. And so, while I know of many people who try to shift their schedules around to be able to at least take a few hours for themselves, kind of the morning, afternoon timeframe of when they are going to learn that they matched into fellowship or not. You know, it is a very different setup. And so, I think most people matching into fellowship actually do initially find out at least in private before they're able to celebrate in a more public setting.
Murphy: What advice would you offer to other students on the best way to spend their Match Day?
Dr. Foster: So I think it's important for students to really follow your heart, follow what feels right to you, because ultimately this is your day. And while you may have certain pressures or expectations from family and friends who want to celebrate your success, realize that everybody comes into Match Day with different experiences. Some people are really highly successful on their interview trail. Some people SOAP into the position that they end up matching into. And for some people, this may not be their first Match Day or first interview season. So everybody comes with different experiences, but of course everyone is also different. And knowing yourself and knowing how you feel about the expectations that may be placed upon you during a highly emotionally charged moment like finding out where you matched into residency. Just understand and take stock of how you feel about that process. And then at the end of the day, it's important for you to do what feels right for you in your own mental health. And if that means celebrating and the traditional public Match process, that's wonderful. But if it means taking an alternative route and deciding that what's best for you learning where you matched in private and then choosing how you want to celebrate your own Match, then I think that's a really valid and important thing to recognize about yourself and something that you should follow if that feels right for you.
Murphy: With that, we appreciate you taking the time to be here with us today, Dr. Foster.
Dr. Foster: Thanks so much. It was great speaking with you, Brendan.
Murphy: It was great to have you. This was very valuable advice to our listeners. I'm AMA Senior News Writer, Brendan Murphy. Thank you for listening to Making the Rounds.
Unger: The AMA is here to help you master the process to secure a residency match—learn more at ama-assn.org/meetyourmatch. Thanks for listening.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.