Match Day Triumph: Our Journey to Chicago for Orthopaedic Surgery Residency
The day we’ve been anticipating for what feels like an eternity has finally arrived! It’s been a week overflowing with intense emotions, exhilarating news, and a profound sense of relief that is truly hard to put into words. While I couldn’t help but share a little sneak peek on Instagram, for those just joining our journey, the past few days have culminated in a monumental turning point in our lives.
For anyone outside the medical field, fully explaining the intricate and often grueling “Match” process for medical residency feels akin to attempting to describe a complex symphony to someone who has never heard music. It’s an insane, all-consuming experience, demanding years of dedication and sacrifice. When I say it’s one of those “do you have 45 minutes to spare?” type of conversations, I truly mean it. This high-stakes process determines where graduating medical students will complete their specialized training, essentially charting the course for their entire professional future. Although we knew this day was a distant, yet inevitable, milestone when Connor first embarked on his medical school journey several years ago, the speed with which it crept up on us was honestly quite startling, a testament to how quickly time flies when you’re deeply immersed in such an intense academic and professional pursuit.
Just last year, at this very time, our focus was entirely consumed by meticulously researching and narrowing down potential residency programs across the country. More critically, we were strategizing where Connor should undertake his “away” orthopaedic surgery rotations – these are essentially month-long, intensive working interviews specifically designed to significantly boost an applicant’s chances of matching into such a highly competitive specialty. The summer and fall of that year became a dizzying blur of travel, rigorous study, and high-pressure evaluations. Connor seemed to be everywhere at once, jetting from the vibrant streets of Chicago to the bustling avenues of New York City, and then to the scenic hills of San Francisco, all packed into an incredibly intense four-month period. These “away” rotations were not merely about showcasing his skills; they were about integrating into different hospital cultures, learning from diverse faculty, and consistently proving his dedication, resilience, and capability under immense and constant pressure. It was an exhausting, but absolutely necessary, part of the journey towards securing an orthopaedic surgery residency.
The intensity of the application process didn’t wane. Connor spent almost the entirety of January traveling for formal residency interviews across the nation. This period was a relentless cycle of flights, carefully chosen attire, formal dinners, and back-to-back conversations with program directors and faculty. By February, after countless hours of deliberation, reflection, and deep discussion, we officially submitted our rank order list – a highly prioritized ranking of all the programs where he had interviewed. The tension surrounding this submission was palpable; every decision felt weighted with the significance of our future. For Connor, Chicago was unequivocally his top choice, a decision we both eagerly hoped would materialize.
To distill a notoriously complex and opaque process into simple terms: applicants rank the residency programs where they interviewed in order of their preference. Concurrently, those very programs rank the applicants they interviewed. An incredibly sophisticated and highly confidential computer algorithm then processes all of these preferences, meticulously matching thousands of medical students to residency positions across the country. It’s a system designed to optimize outcomes for both applicants and programs, yet it leaves everyone involved on tenterhooks until the very last moment, a true test of patience and emotional fortitude.
The first critical step in this unfolding drama arrived on “Black Monday,” as it’s informally known in the medical community. This was the day we anxiously awaited the initial, life-altering news: whether Connor had successfully matched into an orthopaedic surgery program at all. Surprisingly, I had felt a profound sense of calm and confidence throughout the preceding weekend, almost as if I instinctively knew things would work out. However, as Monday morning dawned, a familiar wave of last-minute nerves inevitably crept in, tightening my stomach with anticipation. Precisely at noon, an email landed in Connor’s inbox at the hospital. A few tense seconds later, my phone vibrated with the most anticipated text message of our lives: “MATCHED!!!!!” The relief was immense, a monumental weight lifted from both our shoulders that felt like years of accumulated stress simply melted away. This was particularly true for Connor, as this year had been exceptionally competitive for orthopaedic surgery applicants, and heartbreakingly, several of his close friends hadn’t been as fortunate, underscoring the sheer difficulty and emotional stakes of the process. The joy was immense, but it was tempered by the knowledge that not everyone shared our good fortune.
