Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine

How was Bolivia?

What is it like in Beaumont, TX?

What should we do about health care in the country?

How was your trip to Bolivia?

"One of you letters says that 'pre-meds don't know anything' and that you do. What does he mean by that?"

Eating good Mexican food and getting a mango margarita at Los Bandidos de Carlos and Mickey's. Had I known that Hurricane Rita was going to cancel my Baylor interview, I would have gotten smashed. And I'm a teetotaller. I didn't care about this interview so much that I wore a wierd hat I had bought in Bolivia to it. It makes me look like a 1930s gangster.

El Paso doesn't seem to be that bad of a town. I wouldn't mind studying at El Paso at all. Seems okay out there compared to College Station/Temple and Lubbock. I got a free folder for a medical school that doesn't exist yet.

That it sucks. That the "best interview lunch" of the Texas circuit was at Texas Tech in LUBBOCK not El Paso.

That I was a complete idiot for delaying Baylor's interview for camping out in the godforsaken West Texas desert. I also discovered that all Texas Tech medical students have to spend two years in Lubbock and then break up for the last two years between Amarillo, El Paso, and Lubbock.

THIS ACCOUNT IS ABOUT A TX TECH INTERVIEW in EL PASO WHICH IS NOT YET A FULL MEDICAL SCHOOL (2008). This interview experience was just awful and mostly accidental. The other days offered for Tech were filled up with other interviews, so I had to pick the interview day that was in El Paso instead of Lubbock. Usually a school will have administrators and an army of secretaries ready for your interview. Not this place. TWO bumbling guys run the show here and make the presentations about Texas Tech. One guy talked about the MD/MBA program and how good ol' Gov. Preston Smith, a Red Raider alumnus, felt like making a medical school out west at his alma mater. Applicants (good and bad alike) have been suffering ever since. After that, the guy in red (I forget who) said, “Well, since you will all have to stay in Lubbock for two years, I’ll show a video about Lubbock.” At which point he promptly RAN out of the room. Had I known better, I would have too. The video went on to describe the wonders of the South Plains of Texas. “I lahk Lubbock cuz there’s plehnty of parkin’,” gushed one satisfied customer. “It’s a great place to raise a family.” Sorry pal, not at that stage in life. “There’s no traffic out here.” Because Lubbock blows so hard Buddy Holly wrote the blues out there. “There’s a Stonehenge made out of Cadillacs here.” I tried to slit my wrist with a pen, but it wasn’t working. After that video, all of us interviewees started looking around wondering what we had got ourselves into. The bloke in red came back and said, “Lunch isn’t ready, so does anyone have a question.” Someone asked about the MBA thing, and Mr. Red had to pull out Good ol’ Boy out to answer the question cuz he didn’t know the MD/MBA program from a hole in the ground. Then a Mexican-American El Pasoan doctor named Palafox got up to talk (people out there really are different from the rest of Texas). He was wearing a string cowboy/Western tie and was my second interview. “I want to say something,” he says, shocking Mr. Red. “Ah have no idea what this man is about to say, but I’ll let him talk for fifteen minutes.” Palafox goes for thirty. He goes into this ill-defined harangue and diatribe about how much medicine blows and how poor it is out here on the border and how his wife kept him from getting a Corvette because she wanted a house for the kids (no lie.... I’m not that creative). It’s all about money; it sucks out here, and goddammit we doctors need to get up and be militant about the health problems here. Not that I disagree, but when he finished we were all about to kill ourselves. And then the lunch sucked for vegetarians. The interviews were really good. First up was a neonatologist who loved me and my essay. Mostly I bullshitted about my recent trip to Bolivia to volunteer in a hospital the month before (long story). Anyhow, I think the only non-specific question was how should improve health care to which I gave my Canadian “national health insurance” opinion. Which wasn’t a lie, and I actually know about it so don’t crib notes without knowing. Palafox gave me a little tour of the hospital and facilities, including the hole in the ground where the medical school is supposed to be when the good ol’ boys in Austin get around to sending the money over. I bullshat with him pretty well (Vishnu knows I can bullshit till the cows come home), and I went waaaay over time. Just talk about the Third World and how in El Paso it is across the street. I don’t think Palafox should be a problem for anyone since you can already know what he likes to talk about before you even get in there. The scariest thing was the fact that the hospital didn’t look that different from the one in Bolivia, with so many patients that people were in stretcher beds in the hallways. At the end, Good ol’ Boy said, "Well, maybe Texas Tech isn't your first choice...." Ain't that the damn truth.