Interview Trail, Episode 7: UAB

I fell a little behind on this one. I actually went to Birmingham to interview at UAB the week before Christmas, but never had time to write about it with all of the holiday updates. As a disclaimer, I hate driving to Birmingham from Memphis. I absolutely hate it. First I have to go through Mississippi, which is bad enough. There is no good way to get on the Highway 78 from where I live, and on top of that it is a sad and sorry excuse for a road. Also, there is no good way to get into Birmingham from Highway 78. There is no direct connection to the interstate, and you have to go through a lot of traffic lights once you get there before you can ever get onto their interstates. That being said, I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed the city and the program. I went alone since Katie and I have seen Birmingham before and so that she could stay home and work. Thus, there are no pictures from this trip. I stayed at the Doubletree and they now give nice hot chocolate chip cookies when you check in that was a very nice perk. The dinner that night was at a Mexican place called Rojo in a really cool section of town, where I had mahi mahi tacos that were delicious. It was really their internal medicine dinner, but a couple of med-peds residents came, and we formed our own little corner with them and the other med-peds applicants. I really enjoyed talking to one of the residents who ate with us that happened to bring his wife with him. The next day was the usual interview and tours business. They had the most impressive morning report that I have ever been to on the medicine side. I felt like I was in a room with a bunch of fellows rather than a room of residents; I was pretty impressed. They took us out to lunch at an excellent Italian place where I had crab cakes with some kind of pasta. The program director and all of the residents were great. I just got back tonight from Cincinnati, so hopefully I will post on that in the next couple days.