It's been a while

Applications closed yesterday and I have to say the last week was a little stressful. I discovered only days before the closing date that one of my referees was having a hard time writing about me and as such hadn't sent in their necessary responses. Panic. I couldn't understand though why he had to wait for me to remind him of applications imminent close before fessing up. I promptly sent him a copy of my application and set him in the direction of other consultants in the department who I'd had contact with (albeit LESS contact with...I'd asked him for a reason). Then I found out that one of my other referees has gone on leave so they didn't get the reminder. This one should have their own secretary so I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

In all honesty though I did have hard time in picking the third referee. Not because I'm so useless but more because I'm still only half way through my second year and a number of the terms I've done have not had single consultants. The first two were easy: my ortho reg who is now a consultant (yay for him) who told me on a number of occasions he was glad to have me as an intern, and my general medicine consultant who I got along with really well and felt I didn't disappoint too much. The only terms left were emergency (many consultants, minimal contact with each), general surgery (I had my reasons for not picking him), leave relief (need I say more?) and intensive care (the field my third referee came from). I'm also doing ED now and in hindsight perhaps would have chosen one of these consultants but as the term had only just started, this wasn't really an option. Anyway, as I've said to a friend of mine...back to Plan A and he'd better leave me a spot on his South America trip next year!