Dr. Bethie, Chief Resident

As many of you know, Barb has been staying at the best Bed and Breakfast in Chicago…my house. She’s been using my place as a “home base” for many of her residency interviews. In many cases, it has been much cheaper to fly out of O’Hare than Milwaukee airport. So, for many of her 17 interviews, she’s been staying with me!

This week, she’s interviewing at Loyola Medical Center (nine miles from my house). Last night was the social event, a get together to meet fellow interviewees and the current staff. Last night, I got to be Barb’s guest!

I admit I was a little worried. After all, I’m an elementary art teacher who feels nauseous even thinking about an IV! What am I going to be able to converse about with someone who is up to their elbows in guts most of the day? And most importantly, this is part of the interview process; I didn’t want to make Barb look bad!!

We make it to Loyola… I came right from work…putting on make-up and brushing my teeth in the car. No worries, I spit out the car door at a red light! And using amazing internal G.P.S. abilities, I quickly found building nine on the map.

When Barb and I got to the dinner, there were many people already there, so we just joined a table. It tried to sit quietly and drink my beer, but we were sitting with the most fun doctors! The conversation went from cars, to the Bears, to planning a roast for some of the attendings. The conversation was quite entertaining, due to the fact that the format to the roast seemed to be based on “Celebrity Death-Match”. We then began to discuss (based on our discussion of the CW’s “Beauty and the Geek”), if we’d rather be ugly and smart or pretty and dumb. The consensus seemed to be that the majority of people would rather be pretty and dumb than ugly and smart. Soon, one of the residents gave me a name tag for Soman S., who was the Chief Resident and it seemed that many of the interviewees were introducing themselves to me (it was even more fun, when I forget that I was “Soman” and would introduce myself as Beth). It got to the point where due to my acting skills and stellar ability to make up bs on the spot, it was thought that I should be in on the interview process! It was hilarious!! Eventually the residents brought me more beer, because “it’s not like you are here to impress anybody—have another!” I even saw Jocelyn who was a year a head of Barb and me at Augustana. I also had a nice conversation about why I'd never want to be a doctor with one of the research residents, Alrick (that may not be spelled correctly). Anywho, the “rowdy table” was a great time! Nice that I went for an interview and ended up being made Chief Resident…that doesn’t happen to a lowly art teacher everyday!!

Good Luck on the rest of your interview, Barb…hopefully today was as fun as last night!