Match Week begins.
I wonder how long our matches have sat in some idle hard drive. Somewhere, that decision has been made, and has been passed over by human eyes, checking and double-checking the computerized process that unites each applicant with a residency. Shadows may have been moving behind the curtain since the submission of all the rank order lists, but the gears of that machine dont shift until tomorrow, letting each applicant know whether or not they matched at all and then, with the turning of new cogs and the sputtering of new exhausts, it will roll down the path that leads to Match Day. In many ways, tomorrow is as monumental as Friday for those who do not match. It will propel them into a week-long expedition which was traditionally called the scramble, but now is more pleasantly called SOAP (Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program). New trials await some of us before Friday.
My wife and I have hoped and prayed not only that we match where we want, not only that we match where God wants, but that we match at all. As the day sits just beyond the horizon, a nervous thought persists in my mind, reminding me that I dont know that I have matched.
I spent four years in college with the ultimate aim of eventually getting into medical school. I endured classes on plant systematics and physics to satisfy the criteria of my degree, each step more difficult yet taken with more resoluteness than the one before it. My MCAT score is only a dusty number on a shelf now. Celebratory shouts and smiles upon my acceptance to medical school are remembered fondly. After the novelty had worn off, I remember studying for my first exam in medical school. Dizzy, I looked to the ceiling and thought, What have I gotten myself into? Those two years were plodding, tiresome, and grueling; the next two years were taken at a sprint. All four were, as many say, a drink from a fire hose.
I have, of course, oversimplified the process. In relating the academics, I neglected to include friendships, deaths, holidays, failures, awards, literature, marriage, and God. Its impossible to discern if I would be where I am now without, especially, my wife, my family, and God himself. Would I be awaiting Match Day like I am now? But here we are. Match Week! Its upon us!
I almost wrote that it has "all come down to this," but it hasnt. We arent at the bottom of where this might be. Even at the end of residency we still wont be at the bottom of it all. At the end of our lives, we wont be at the bottom of it all. It goes on and on, for the glory of God, forever and ever.
As I reflect upon the myriad of computations that present each applicant with their vague direction tomorrow and marching orders Friday, Im reminded of biblical wisdom:
Proverbs 16:33
The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the Lord.
I wonder how long our matches have sat in some idle hard drive. Somewhere, that decision has been made, and has been passed over by human eyes, checking and double-checking the computerized process that unites each applicant with a residency. Shadows may have been moving behind the curtain since the submission of all the rank order lists, but the gears of that machine dont shift until tomorrow, letting each applicant know whether or not they matched at all and then, with the turning of new cogs and the sputtering of new exhausts, it will roll down the path that leads to Match Day. In many ways, tomorrow is as monumental as Friday for those who do not match. It will propel them into a week-long expedition which was traditionally called the scramble, but now is more pleasantly called SOAP (Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program). New trials await some of us before Friday.
My wife and I have hoped and prayed not only that we match where we want, not only that we match where God wants, but that we match at all. As the day sits just beyond the horizon, a nervous thought persists in my mind, reminding me that I dont know that I have matched.
I spent four years in college with the ultimate aim of eventually getting into medical school. I endured classes on plant systematics and physics to satisfy the criteria of my degree, each step more difficult yet taken with more resoluteness than the one before it. My MCAT score is only a dusty number on a shelf now. Celebratory shouts and smiles upon my acceptance to medical school are remembered fondly. After the novelty had worn off, I remember studying for my first exam in medical school. Dizzy, I looked to the ceiling and thought, What have I gotten myself into? Those two years were plodding, tiresome, and grueling; the next two years were taken at a sprint. All four were, as many say, a drink from a fire hose.
I have, of course, oversimplified the process. In relating the academics, I neglected to include friendships, deaths, holidays, failures, awards, literature, marriage, and God. Its impossible to discern if I would be where I am now without, especially, my wife, my family, and God himself. Would I be awaiting Match Day like I am now? But here we are. Match Week! Its upon us!
I almost wrote that it has "all come down to this," but it hasnt. We arent at the bottom of where this might be. Even at the end of residency we still wont be at the bottom of it all. At the end of our lives, we wont be at the bottom of it all. It goes on and on, for the glory of God, forever and ever.
As I reflect upon the myriad of computations that present each applicant with their vague direction tomorrow and marching orders Friday, Im reminded of biblical wisdom:
Proverbs 16:33
The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the Lord.
