ABSTRACT
The interview was quite important to me as a non-Ivy graduate trying to decide whether I would even be considered for the MGH residency despite being first in my class. I was sent to interview with Dr. George Nardi, who was very gracious and encouraging to me, but I'll never forget what he said to me when trying to describe the committee system to select the intern class. He told me I would be asked "everything from the branches of the aorta to my latest experience at a house of ill repute," but if you knew George, he used a much less politically correct term for the end of that phrase. Needless to say, I applied and got in, and eventually became the East chief, and though I was prepared to answer the proposed question, it was never asked. During my "senior committee" oral session, I felt I had done very well, especially with the last question asked by a bald-headed gentleman whom I didn't know at the time (Linton), who asked me the distinctions between Buerger's disease and atherosclerosis. Being from Baylor, where DeBakey wrote the book on Buerger's disease, I carefully listed the differences between the two entities. I walked out proud as a peacock, only to run into Al Cohen (a Harvard Medical senior and soon to be a fellow intern), who informed me that Dr. Linton did not believe there was such a thing as Buerger's disease. I sulked all the way back to Houston, only to be accepted anyway, so I guess they accepted my enthusiasm over my knowledge.
