Sunday 10 February 2008

Computerised Fate

My future (or the next two years of it) are now in the hands of the Severn deanery computer system. I finally plucked up the courage to click submit yesterday after weeks of wrangling over the order of the 287 jobs I had to rank. In the end, I didn't have to rank all of them but I still had to rank way more than my friends in the NW (who have about 12 to 16 jobs to rank having already been allocated to hospitals). I devoted hours to this ranking process, i'm not sure why, part of me wishes there was a lucky dip option. I'm resigned to the fact I might well end up with anything, anywhere.

In 10 days (as long as there no problems) the 7000 or so final year medical students eagerly awaiting the results, of what for many, is little more than a lottery, will find out their fate for the next two years. What will it be first? Medicine, Surgery, Psychiatry, A&E, Paediatrics or something even more obscure. Who knows.

Personally i'm not all that bothered with what I end up with. Most F1 jobs are going to be fairly similar whatever you're doing. My first choice which i'm 90% sure I won't get included the unlikely subject of gynaecology. A week in wednesday will be an interesting day fo' sure.

I understand that those of you not involved in this process you'll have little idea what i'm talking about. I can tell you, its exceptionally important to the 7000 people waiting to find out the reslts of what has been a 2 or 3 month process.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

well for what its worth, good luck. You had to rank 287 jobs?! I had better start ruminating on what I actually want to do ...

Elaine said...

Best of luck on this one, tlm.

Unknown said...

Good luck!

I'm so glad that I only had to pick six (sets of) jobs to rank. My first choice has two rotations in it - one is a fantastic rotation that I really really want, the other has both psychiatry and GP that I really don't want.

Fingers crossed for everyone, and the sooner the 20th arrives the better!

Anna said...

I agree wiith you - the jobs are all much of a muchness at our level, so who cares! For me, the best jobs will be those with the best teams, and you can't judge that from the descriptions on the foundation programme website... And how annoying was the design of the that stupid website for ranking jobs?! I ended up printing the full descriptions, cutting them up and then laying out my choices round the living room floor. Thank goodness I only had 25 to do!

The Shrink said...

I trained as a GP so dabbled in lots of SHO jobs, I think you're spot on saying the order of what job you get isn't really that important since there's huge similarities in gaining useful skills anyway.

Good luck with it all though, hope at least it's in an area you want to be!

Ms-Ellisa said...

Good Luck LM..!

Hope everything turns out for the best for you.

DundeeMedStudent said...

good luck pal.