My room at the
Crowne Plaza Hotel
in Dallas, Texas.


Hello to all from Dallas! Why am I in Dallas? I am currently on my second of ten scheduled interviews. In order:

SLU in St. Louis, MO
UTSW in Dallas, TX
UMKC in Kansas City, MO
UAB in Birmingham, AL
OUHSC in Oklahoma City, OK
MU in Columbia, MO
UT Memphis in Memphis, TN
UAMS in Little Rock, AR
UK in Lexington, KY
U of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH

I was in St. Louis earlier this week and am spending today and tomorrow in Dallas. The first interview went pretty well I think. Before you ask, "Do you think they will offer you a spot?" let me just say that them offering me an interview was offering me a spot already. As noted in a previous blog, a rank list is submitted by the program and all the applicants. So now it's just a matter of how applicants rank that particular program and how the program ranks all the interviewees. Of note, St. Louis has a great program, with hospital-paid benefits. The residents were all nice people, and the faculty seemed nice as well. I wasn't sure what to expect at first since many of the residents at UAMS seemed to dislike SLU. I can't figure why since the program seems as good or better than UAMS - perhaps a few less cataract cases. This is not likely to be too important to me since I plan on being fellowship trained one day.

I would really like to add an interview at Duke to this list, but I haven't heard from them yet. I have been denied by three places, two in Boston and the other being John's Hopkins; I have turned down four programs now. That leaves about 13 programs I haven't heard from just yet. Some of them might not ever respond, including Duke. We shall see.

We're having a girl in case you haven't heard! Mia Kathryn Thuro.

I am off from school from now until we return in January. This isn't the case for all of my class, it's just how I have scheduled it. Many of my peers took July or August off. I couldn't do that for obvious reasons - rotations I needed to get done early. Two months off to travel and celebrate the holidays isn't too bad if you ask me. I'll be plenty busy.

I'm not sure what else to talk about right now, so see you next time!