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Hello from the interview trail! These past few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of seeing new cities, crashing on the couches of old friends, attending dinners with residents and faculty, and—of course—the actual interviews themselves. After a stretch of five cities and six interviews in nine days, I’m back in Ann Arbor for a few days before heading home to Connecticut for a few weeks and then flying out to the west coast for another stretch of five interviews. I am definitely looking forward to a little downtime during the holidays!

While exhausting at times, the past few weeks have been an amazing experience. Since I am applying into otolaryngology, a relatively small field, each program offers only one or two interview dates. As a result, there are lots of familiar faces at each interview, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of really great fellow applicants and potential colleagues. The interview days are long (we typically have 10-11 faculty interviews in a half-day session, but that went as high as 21 interviews at one program!) so it’s really nice to have such great people to talk with during the breaks and after the formal interview day ends. I’ve also loved getting to explore some new cities that I haven’t been to before. Denver, in particular, was a really fun, vibrant city to walk around, although temperatures were near record lows of -27 degrees with wind chill when I was out there, so I had to somewhat limit my walking tour! The second half of my interview schedule includes some other cities that I cannot wait to visit, including San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Nashville, all of which will be new to me.

I echo what a few of my fourth-year classmates have mentioned in their recent blog post that leaving Michigan to see other programs has made me even more appreciative of my home institution. Michigan has such a wonderful reputation across the country, and I have had numerous faculty members comment about the strength of our clinical training here as medical students. I have my University of Michigan interview tomorrow and am very excited to see this program from an applicant’s point of view.

It’s hard to believe that match day is a mere three months away. With only half of my interviews done by the holidays, I feel like I have a long way to go between now and March 21, but at the same time I know it will be here before I know it. This is both terrifying and very exciting!

I hope everyone has a safe and relaxing holiday! For those applying to medical school, feel free as always to email me with any questions about Michigan! (flynns@umich.edu). See you in the New Year!