Residency Interviews: Time to explain myself.

Riding up to the chair lift with Jonathan Bastian and Torrie Bradshaw at Sunshine Mountain the day after my interview in Calgary. One of many reason I would have been happy to call this city home.

My return to Canada was the only mandatory part of my traveling year; I knew it would temporarily have to come to a close for me to pursue a position in a family medicine residency. There were only two interviews that I applied for: one in Calgary and one in Vancouver. British Columbia has a centralized interview process, meaning that the interview score I obtain can be applied to any program in the province. When I returned from my travels, I set out to remind myself why I want to become a family physician, as well as prepare for any personal questions the interviewers might throw my way.

Beacon Hill Park in Victoria. It was a great place to clear my mind before the interview in Vancouver.

Preparing for an interview is a tough process! One way I organized was by spending time in clinics with two extremely talented physicians, Dr. Kriegler and Dr. Schnurr. They’re both inspirational doctors who demonstrate how specialized a career in family medicine can be, not to mention how it’s constantly evolving. It’s exciting to be on the frontlines of healthcare, where you not only treat people who are sick but also improve their overall wellbeing by preventing future need for pharmaceutical treatment or surgery.

Photo taken with GO PRO camera.

The rest of my interview preparation focused on considering all other potential questions and there really is no end to what they might ask. After trying to convince myself that I didn’t really need to prepare, that I just needed to be “myself,” I realized my lazy side was running the show. If anything, preparation work would help me feel more confident on the day of the interview. Attempting to ask myself questions about my strengths and weaknesses, where I see myself in ten years, and what words best describe me made realize there is plenty about myself I don’t know.

Sunset in Nanaimo.

Realizing you never really know whom you are is a weird concept to get your head around. What does it even mean to not know yourself? I guess it’s really not that difficult a question to consider when we step back and think about how most of us use our energy. In school we are constantly trying to understand the material we are learning, plan our social schedule, and rest our mind in our spare time. Jobs are extremely demanding; even when you get home from work your mind often stays behind, trying to figure out what problems it will have to confront the next day. Dealing with so many stressors, how can any of us find time to figure out who we really are? Why would we even want to?

In reality, if we take time to better understand ourselves, we’ll find it easier to solve many of the challenges we face. What’s strange is how scary it can be for us to tackle these questions. But what is there to fear? Aside from the fact that we might actually move toward real change when we find something we don’t like, that is. Not everyone initially likes the idea of changing whom he or she is; it seems way too hard. But is it really that much harder than living a life that leaves you trapped in a limited thought pattern?

Van city.

I went through a few life changes throughout these past couple of years, but I don’t necessarily believe that they made me a different person; instead, they actually allowed me to stay true to my character. We adopt a lot of habits that shape our personas, so choosing to dropping various facets of ourselves is difficult. But the best definition of insanity that I have heard is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. Once you figure out what’s bothering you and cut it out of your life—no matter how difficult that might be—you’ll likely realize it was that same thing or activity that was draining your energy and making life a chore.

Less is more when it comes to our personas. Really, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is grant ourselves permission to just “be.” In our society, we are always human “doings” but rarely are we human “beings.” There is nothing more exhausting than feeling like you have to wear a mask created out of past constructs and ideas. Memories are accumulated from the past, and the past is dead. It’s an elating feeling to leave behind old ideas for new ones. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand” Albert Einstein; we just need to learn to“understand the problem,” for then “the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem…” –Jiddu Krishnamurti