Match Day Jackpot!

It was an exciting day to say the least. Match Day is the day when graduating medical students learn where they will be doing their residencies. The tension is palpable. Many students have trouble sleeping the night before, like kids waiting for Christmas morning. I tried to be stoic about the whole thing, but I decided to put on a double layer of deodorant just in case.

Each graduating student that has matched receives an envelope with their match results inside. It is the tradition of my medical school, and others, to distribute the envelopes one by one during the Match Day ceremonies and everyone opens their envelopes at the same time. The envelopes are distributed at random so nobody knows when they will be called to walk up.

In addition to this, there is another tradition in which each student places one dollar in a jackpot when they get their envelope and the last student to receive an envelope is the lucky winner of the jackpot. It so happened that I was that lucky winner (as you can see in the picture). It was around $180! I was about to have a heart attack before my name was called. All the other students except me had received their envelopes and I was standing there thinking to myself that a mistake had been made and my envelope wasn’t there. I am sure this is why the last student gets the jackpot, because otherwise it would seriously suck to be last.

So, when the announcement was made, we all opened are envelopes to see where we’d be going. Some people smiled. Others cried.

I smiled.

Birmingham, here we come.