Gianmarco Calderara:
Hello, and thanks for listening to Resonance podcast, a podcast run by medical and graduate students at Baylor College of Medicine, where we interview clinicians, faculty, and researchers about their work in an effort to promote health, education, and ingenuity. My name is Gianni Calderara. I am a fourth-year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine, and I'm going to be co-hosting this episode today with my co-student and one of my close friends, Ryan Sorensen.
Ryan Sorensen:
Nice to join you today, Gianni.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Ryan is going to be leading us through a conversation with Dr. Andrew Lee. I'm just going to give a brief introduction to Dr Lee. So, Dr Lee is the Herb and Jean Lyman Centennial Chair in Ophthalmology, and he's also the founding Chairman of the Blanton Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology at Houston Methodist Hospital. He's also a professor of ophthalmology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, and an adjunct professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M, The University of Iowa, and the University of Buffalo. Dr. Lee has been an American Academy of Ophthalmology member for over 25 years. He has served in various leadership roles. He's also a past president and current chairman of the board of the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society. He's authored over 500 peer-reviewed publications, has written a few textbooks, and has given a whole bunch of named lectures. He also has a very large YouTube presence with over 80,000 subscribers. So, Ryan introduced me to Dr Lee. Ryan, could you tell us a little bit about how you first met Dr. Lee and sort of how this podcast came about?
Ryan Sorensen:
Yeah, Dr. Lee is one of my mentors. I'm interested in ophthalmology, and he's a neuro-ophthalmologist. I met him my first year of medical school, actually at an event that he was presenting on building our brand for residency applications, which is the
subject of our podcast today. And since then, I've been on multiple research projects with him and helped with his YouTube channel. It's really been a pleasure to get to work with him over the years, and I'm really grateful to have him as a mentor.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Yeah, and like Ryan said, this episode is going to be all about preparing for residency applications, which are coming up later in the fall. Dr. Lee's going to be talking to us sort of about building our brand for residency and how we can sort of sell ourselves to programs and what we want our message to be, and how we can go about conveying that message in the best way possible. I'm excited to hear from him, and I think it'll be a good episode. So, without further ado, let’s hear from Dr Lee.
Ryan Sorensen:
All right, let's get to it.
Gianmarco Calderara:
All right. Well, Dr Lee, thank you so much for being here and agreeing to do this with us. I was really excited to hear about this topic from Ryan because I know applications are kind of, you know, around the corner, and I'm very excited for my own personal learning and some strategies I'm going to get just from a personal point of view. So, thank you so much for being here and taking the time to do this with us.
Dr. Lee:
Thanks for having me.
Ryan Sorensen:
Yeah, we're excited. We were just going over the introduction earlier, and I told Gianni that this is a really special opportunity for both of us just to sit down with you and get some insight into applying to residency programs. So, if you don't mind, we'll just get right into the questions. First, if you can just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what got you interested in ophthalmology and how you ended up in Houston.
Dr. Lee:
So, I'm from Charleston, West Virginia, but I went to the University of Virginia for medical school and college, and then I chose to come to Houston for residency. I was at Baylor College of Medicine for ophthalmology residency and was the chief resident. And in my chief year, my chairman decided that I would come back and join the faculty when I finished at Johns Hopkins in neuro-ophthalmology. And so I did. I was on the faculty at Baylor for 10 years, and then we were 10 years at the University of Iowa before we decided to come back to Houston, and I became the Chair of the Blanton Eye Institute here at Houston Methodist Hospital.
Ryan Sorensen:
All right, thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about why you're interested in academic medicine and why you chose to do academic medicine over private medicine?
Dr. Lee:
So I think, like most people who choose academics, you're going into it for clinical care, education, and research. But for me, the thing that keeps me in academic medicine is getting the chance to work with wonderful young people like yourselves. And there's nothing more rewarding for a teacher than to see the success of their students, professionally and personally. And so that's what keeps me going every day and keeps me in the game.
Gianmarco Calderara:
And I know we talked a little bit about your YouTube channel that you have. I talked a little bit about how I watched some of those videos my first year of medical school. Where did that idea come from and how did that YouTube channel start?
Dr. Lee:
So, over the years I've learned that young people learn differently than when I was a medical student, and young people of today want things that are quick. They like video formats, they want the information now and on-demand, and they don't want to go to the library. And so for me, it was a learning experience of my own to reframe my teaching style to meet those needs of the modern learner, short, digestible video vignettes about focused topics that are less than three minutes. It turned out to be the most rewarding thing that I've done in the education space in a long time because that YouTube channel has 6 million views and 80,000 subscribers, which is way more than any paper or any book I've ever written in my whole career.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about sort of your experience, you know, interviewing residency applicants and kind of just looking over applications over the years?
Dr. Lee:
So as an interviewer, what we're looking for is two things, "fit" and "fitness." They're not the same thing, even though they sound similar. Fitness is what you bring to the table as an applicant, your credentials, your scores, your grades, your CV, your extracurricular activities, and that determines your fitness. And because there are so many applicants to ophthalmology, almost everybody has fitness. What we're looking for in the interview is not fitness. We're looking for fit. And for fit, what we're looking for is alignment with our value system. But also, can I see myself working with this person every day for three years, and is this the kind of person that I would want to see out in the community and be proud of. So for me, our product in academics, and education especially, is people. And so what we're looking for is fit and a good product.
Gianmarco Calderara:
So I guess kind of what we're talking about today on this podcast is really fit. We're really honing in on how we can kind of optimize our fit as applicants. And I guess at this point, when you are, you know, applying, your fitness is already sort of kind of, you know, well there's still opportunity for improvement and that sort of thing but...
Dr. Lee:
And that's one of the main messages I want to communicate today. You need to find your people. You need to find your peeps. You need to find the place where you feel comfortable and that you have alignment with their learning and teaching culture and where you feel most comfortable with your own self. And that means finding a unique but also authentic version of yourself, the best version of yourself that you can present on interview day.
Ryan Sorensen:
Dr Lee, the first time I met you was actually when you were presenting on building your brand, which was just like what you're talking about, presenting your own unique self, your own unique brand. Could you describe for our listeners what you mean by building your brand?
Dr. Lee:
So your listeners probably are familiar with corporate brands. So when I say the word Nike, for example, which actually means victory, it's the Greek goddess of victory, they are trying to communicate that brand. And they often have a slogan like Nike's happens to be, just do it right? And so they're trying to convey that as their brand, or a company like FedEx, which is trying to communicate if it actually has to be there overnight, absolutely positively, you know, you can trust this. And so for the corporate world, brands are a promise, a promise, and an expectation that they will meet a goal or an objective or some product brand that they're trying to sell. But for people, your promise too. So when you come to the interview, you're bringing your brand, and that brand is your promise, your promise that you will do your best, that you will be a success, and that you will represent this program in the future in the best possible light. And so your brand is your own. And Oscar Wilde would say, "you must be yourself, because everybody else is taken" and that is the most important quality of the brand, authenticity. It has to be your own. And as an interviewer, I'm looking for inauthenticity, and I can detect who's not genuine, who's not sincere, who's just saying the words, but actually doesn't believe in what they're selling. And you have to believe it. And in order to believe it, it has to be true.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Let's say, you know, an applicant just has no idea what their brand is, right? Or just for whatever reason, they're having a hard time kind of pinpointing, you know, what they want their message to be to an interviewer, what advice would you give that applicant or some steps you can take to really hone in on what your brand is going to be?
Dr. Lee:
Yeah, I think a lot of your listeners probably this whole brand concept is a novel concept to them. They're used to presenting their CV, which is usually just a laundry list of activities and extracurricular things, and it's just, a list, and because that's gotten you where you are, you think that's the next step also. But this is a totally different ball game when you make the change from medical school, where there's 200 people in your class to residency, where there might be only four or six and so that means you have to stand out without sticking out. And so creating a brand requires strategic, intentional, and deliberate crafting of the brand. And all good brands start with a core. And so for our hospital, we call those the I care values, integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence. And so everybody's brand has to start with that as the foundation. What I mean by building on your brand is taking those foundational elements which, of course, are given, in fact, to be a good doctor and a good ophthalmologist, and making it your own. And one of the things that building a brand means is searching for the thing that makes you, you. I always say your brand should be recognizable instantly by your mom or your best friend. It should be that kind of obvious, and we don't want to rehash the core elements of intelligence, team player, and communication. Those are all in your CV. What you're trying to show the interviewer and the faculty that are going to be with you is that you offer something new, novel, unique, and whether that's your hobby or your outside interest, or whatever track you're on. And so one of the questions I always ask applicants when they come to me about their brand is, are you on a track? Because if you're on a track that already establishes the core elements that you're going to build on. So typical tracks, and therefore typical brands include leadership, advocacy, care of the underserved, resolving health care disparities, and looking at inequities in the health care system. From an access standpoint, there are whole different arenas where tracks make it just so much easier for you to have a brand. Some of the brands are very scientific, space medicine or genetics, but even within those scientific tracks, you have to develop your own passion and enthusiasm for something within that track that makes you stand out.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Okay. And when you say track, are you talking about, like, formal, like pathways, programs, that sort of thing?
Dr. Lee:
Yeah. So some medical schools, including Baylor College Medicine, make it so easy because they just give you the track, but many medical schools have no track at all, so they just have to make their own track. But in order to make their own track, they have to at least kind of have an idea of what that track looks like. And so the common domains are leadership, advocacy, and care of the underserved. These are kind of common ones, and then less common ones are like community service, diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. These are the kinds of tracks that you can make on your own without a formal track.
Ryan Sorensen:
I hate to put both of you on the spot, but what if I give you some of some interesting things Gianni's done, and you create a brand for him?
Gianmarco Calderara:
Oh my gosh, it's gonna be huge for me.
Ryan Sorensen:
So we talked earlier about Gianni was a participant on American Idol, and he got to Hollywood, which I remember was really exciting.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Ryan and I also went to high school together.
Ryan Sorensen:
Yeah. So we’ve known each other for a long time. Gianni has also done a lot of research. He's interested in radiology. He's done a lot of work with the inmates at the jail here.
Anything else you want to add?
Gianmarco Calderara:
No, I swam for a long time too, but yeah, that's it.
Dr. Lee:
So even though those are unique for Gianni and obviously are interesting and exciting kinds of things, so you've already got what we would call a hook. And every great song and every great movie has to have a hook, and so you've already got your hook, which is you are demonstrating creativity. You're pattern-oriented and visually oriented because of your interest in radiology and music itself has a science to it and an art. So ophthalmology and really all specialties in medicine are both science and art. So trying to show that to an interviewer with your activities is part of brand development. And so when you have activities like music and art, which have both the creative side, especially if you can say there's a science side to it, and you can elaborate and articulate that science side that shows that you can become a successful and innovative ophthalmologist or radiologist or whatever you end up choosing. And so you're using your extracurricular activities to showcase things that are not evident in your CV. And so when you're building that kind of brand, and then you have this side track serving
underserved and vulnerable communities, and you would incorporate the brand in every opportunity there as well. So for example, for music, if you are if you're taking care of patients who are prisoners or vulnerable populations, music is a binding force and allows you to have a commonality with people across all cultures and across all socioeconomic categories, and so using that music piece in your everyday activities to bond with people is a unique offering. And so that's what you're trying to do with your brand development. Show that your activities are not just cool, that your activities are going to make you a better doctor, have made you a better person, and will make you proud to have been in this program, that that is what I'm looking for. So yeah, I think that's a great start, Gianni, and it forms a great brand, and you've got a lot of things going for you because everybody has played one of the following instruments, guitar, piano, cello, violin, everybody's gone on one of the following rotations, homes, clinics, St Vincent clinic, some volunteer clinic, everybody's been to one of the following countries, Haiti, Madagascar, wherever. And that's by design, right? It's a checklist system. So if you have the opportunity to show something novel like I was on American Idol, that is going to resonate and make you memorable, authentic, and unique, and that is what you're going for, and that's what I'm looking for.
Ryan Sorensen:
I think you have a great knack for being able to put all that together. I think you really described literally what Gianni is. That's what I see as his classmate. But I think we were writing personal statements yesterday, and we were both struggling, trying to put it into words. So we really appreciate you showing us how you do that well.
Dr. Lee:
I think that is the key. That's the reason to come to me. I cannot make your brand. I just make your brand better. I'm your sales and marketing division. I'm your Public Relations Division. You're the product. I can't make the product better, but I can make the sales pitch better, and we have to make it a bite-sized brand. We have to sell in one or two words, and what we're going for is what Ryan alluded to. He's known you since high school, and so if we articulate the brand without ever saying your name, Ryan could literally say that's my friend Gianni, right, for sure, and that's what you're going for.
Ryan Sorensen:
Over the years of reading residency applications, are there some brands that you remember that really stick out to you?
Dr. Lee:
Yeah, so the best brands are ones that incorporate the core values and show rather than say passion and enthusiasm. Enzo Ferrari said passion cannot be stated. It can only be lived. And I truly believe that your chance to showcase your passion is not by saying you're passionate and enthusiastic about ophthalmology. It's by showing your passion and enthusiasm for ophthalmology, and you have to show that same level of passion in your other activities. So it's better to be the leader of two things than the member of 10 things. It's better to have one thing that you took to completion on your own than be the participating member in 10 things, the worst brands are ones that are just rehashes of the CV. We have read your curriculum vitae, and we have looked at your resume. You don't have to rehash all your activities. Your interview is your chance to make a sales pitch, and it has to be short, and it has to be clear, and it has to be you, authentic, you. And that's what I mean by being able to articulate your brand. You have to show me the passion, you have to show me the enthusiasm. And that's what auditions are for. And in the creative world. You know, this is, is true. You can't just look at people's CVs and say, okay, they would be great for this part. You have to have them come in and read for that part. And you're reading for the part when you come. And if you're just straight up reading your CV, you're not going to get the part.
Gianmarco Calderara:
So it sounds like, you know, being authentic. It really starts with a personal statement, and then, you know, kind of extends to the interview, I guess. How would you go about making sure that those two things are in agreement with one another? And obviously, if you're being authentic, that makes it a lot easier. But kind of when you're going to your personal statement for the first time, you know blank piece of paper, kind of what are the things that you're thinking of to first put down, or kind of structuring that at the towards the beginning process of it.
Dr. Lee:
Yeah, so you should really be writing with the end in mind. You need to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But really you have to have a punchline at the end that incorporates and sells your brand, and ideally, you would Telegraph that that's going to be the end.
It’s in your interview by saying words like "the most important thing about that experience was," and "what I learned from that was," and then you're going to hit them with the punchline. Every brand has to have a punchline. And so if your brand is innovation and creativity, then we're going to use that word at the beginning, the middle, and the end. We want to reinforce the concept three times. Here's what I am. Here's the proof that I'm that. And let me tell you again who I am, because at the end of the personal statement, you want the reader to say in one word or two words, that's what this is. And many, many brands are like this. So if I just say Mercedes, for instance, Mercedes is luxury. The best or nothing, that's kind of what their brand is. If you look at a company like BMW, which is looking at the exact same demographic in terms of price point and who they're appealing to, they're not trying to be that they're trying to be driving is a pleasure, the ultimate driving machine. They're trying to sell that driving itself is the goal. And if you're going to do that, and if you believe this, then our vehicle is the one to take you there. All sports cars are fast. Lamborghini, Ferrari, and McLarens are all fast, but they're not trying to say they're fast. Everybody knows they're fast. What they are trying to sell is different brands for different people, even though they're trying to reach the same demographic. And that's this application process. Everybody's smart, everybody's a team player. Everybody has passion and enthusiasm for ophthalmology. That will not be a differentiating feature, you must find your niche, and you must sell that niche, and that is the goal of the personal statement.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Actually, I really like the analogy of, like the sports cars, kind of like comparing that to, like intelligence in medicine. I think that's a really, really solid analogy.
Ryan Sorensen:
Yeah, I think when I was on rotation with you, you said when you interview, they're not going to remember your name, but they're going to remember a future astronaut or Olympic trial swimmer or American Idol participant, and that's how they're going to refer about you for the whole application cycle as they talk with other people that have read your personal statement and interviewed you. I didn't realize that, and I thought that was very insightful. So I just thought I would, I would share that
Dr. Lee:
No, that is exactly the message your listeners need to hear. You're trying to use whatever you have, whether it's American Idol or Olympic swimmer, to make a memorable connection to your brand. You, it's your job to explain how being on American Idol makes you a better applicant. The American Idol thing is just to get them to remember you because they can't remember your name. And Neil Gaiman would say that human beings are hardwired for storytelling. We are storytelling creatures, and we're story-listening creatures. And even in medicine, we learn better from case reports. We learn better from presentations of cases. And if you've gone to lectures, you know that the best lectures start with a case report. They want you to connect with a person, a personal story. And that's what I mean by having your own authentic personal voice. You want your story to resonate with that person, and you want them to remember the story the hook, and make that connection to your name, and then say this. And this is the kind of person we want in our program, because when we go to the other room, we're looking through the names, and you want the person to not be judging you anymore. You want that person to be advocating for you in the other room. That's your goal, turning this person from a judge to an advocate.
Gianmarco Calderara:
I’ve got a lot of work to do on my personal statement when I get home.
Ryan Sorensen:
We've still got some time. I was just gonna say we've kind of touched on our personal statement quite a bit. I was wondering if it's okay if we went on to talk a little bit about interviewing. The first question I want to ask has to do with one of your famous quotes, don't let amygdala grab you. Can you explain this and explain why it's important for when you're interviewing?
Dr. Lee:
Yeah. So as your listeners probably know, the amygdala is part of your limbic system, and that's the emotional part of your brain. It's really deep inside your brain because it's that old. So the older parts of your brain, like your brain stem, evolved from lower animals. Cortex only comes later, and so deep inside all of us is the amygdala and this limbic system. It's right next to your memory, the hippocampus, and your temporal lobe.
On purpose. And the reason is you need to remember the cave where the saber tooth tiger almost ate you. You need to know which plant almost killed you when you ate it, and which plant saved your brother, Tor when he was sick. You need to know what that plant looked like. And so you're making an emotional connection with the amygdala. Unfortunately, it turns into fight or flight, sympathetic or fear, and it's a good thing. You want to remember what you're afraid of, and so what I mean by don't let the amygdala grab you is that. We want to use that emotional connection to memory to make the person who's interviewing you have an emotional person-to-person connection that will make you memorable, but not with fear, love, and with like. Amazingly, the amygdala does that too. When you meet the person you're going to be with for the rest of your life, you feel it. You feel it in your sympathetics. You feel it in your stomach. You feel it in your sweating and your heart rate, it's like a core response, a sympathetic autonomic response that you call love, but I call amygdala,
and we cannot let the amygdala grab us. What that means is amygdala can make you want to run away. Amygdala can make you shy away from challenges, and that's fear. And when people are brave and are courageous, they're not, not afraid, they're afraid, but that is not courage. Courage is the realization that there are things more important than fear, and that is what you're striving for. When I mean by control your amygdala, I mean, yes, you're afraid, but push through, keep going, and then you will find that you can control amygdala to your advantage, and that creates memories, and that creates memorability in the listener, and that is what you're trying to achieve. The amygdala is a very dangerous thing. Amygdala, in Greek, it means almond, and so that little nut, don't let that little nut control you. You have to control the little nut because if you let the little nut control you, you'll go nuts. And so you must learn control, and that is what I mean by amygdala.
Ryan Sorensen
Thank you so much for explaining that.
Gianmarco Calderara:
As we kind of approach interview, you know, season. What are some of the things that you'd recommend applicants to do to prepare for, you know, an interview, and really for, I guess, a lot of us, the last time we interviewed, you know, we really had one big interview for med school, you know, a couple of them, and then, you know, the next one's residency. How do we go about practicing or preparing for it?
Dr. Lee:
Yeah, so ideally, you'd be already working on this prospectively from the start, by keeping a diary of every single thing you've ever done in your whole life.
Because you're collecting vignettes, you're going to choose 20 and hone it down to 10, your 10 best adventures. And you're going to use those short vignettes to propel your brand because there are very few questions that can be asked of you. They cover very specific domains, leadership, communication, conflict resolution, a failure scenario, a strength slash weakness,
dealing with an ethical issue, overcoming a challenge or a barrier. There are just very few behavior-based scenarios that interviewers can ask you. So, it usually comes to you like a behavior-based question. “Tell me a time when you had to take on a leadership role. Tell me about a time you failed and what you did about it. Tell me about the greatest obstacle you've had to overcome in these are very standard questions.” And so, because we know what the questions are, you can have the answers prepared in advance. And what you're trying to do with the answers is not make them rote. They still have to be spontaneous. But what you're trying to do is have structure, a beginning, a middle, and an end, and you'll end with “and the thing I learned from that experience was that” insert the punchline, “that sometimes being a leader means putting yourself last”, or whatever your punchline is. And it's really important that you practice these things because the interviews have all gone to Zoom. And so as opposed to a face-to-face interaction where you have body language and you have tone, you lose all of those social cues on Zoom, and so it's awkward to do this, and so you have to practice, weirdly, your answers on zoom with a trusted colleague or friend, and then you'll do the same for them. Then you'll deconstruct all the answers, and you'll say when you know the beginning was good here, but we didn't have appropriate rising exposition, and we didn't have a good conclusion. And you have to be prepared for standardized questions as well. Standardized questions have standard answers, and so that means if a question comes to you like a witnessed ethical scenario, you have to use the standard format, which is justice, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and autonomy. If it's giving bad news, you would use some sort of protocol, like spikes, you know, setting the proper private encounter scenario, inviting the person to participate, assessing their knowledge, learning their perception, using empathy, and having a solution. And if it's dealing with a problem patient or an angry patient, you can use whatever structure you're going to use, but you have to have a structure because those standard answers are graded, and so programs that use standardized questions have a scoring rubric, and if you don't have a structure, it won't come out right. The other thing you have to practice is conversational tone and contact. It's very tempting to end in a conversational manner because you don't want to look like overly formal but in interview settings, you have to have a beginning, middle, and end. So, the most common ending that we see on our side is, “Yeah, that's what happened,” or “Yeah, I really enjoyed that.” That, “yeah, that's what happened,” Is a common way to end sentences in conversation, but it's not a good ending for delivering a punchline and showcasing your brand. We'd rather have it end “and you know, the best part of that experience was,” or “the most important thing about that activity was” so that the learner listens, and the listener understands that you're about to end with the punchline, and here it comes, and then you stop, then you won't end with the blah, yeah, that's what I did.
Ryan Sorensen:
Thanks. That was really insightful. You mentioned that the interviews have gone to Zoom. What's some advice you have? Besides, you mentioned practicing. What other advice do you have for doing well on Zoom?
Dr. Lee:
So we do a mock for all our candidates right before their first interview. The first thing we're going to be assessing is lighting, volume, your microphone, and whether you're on mute or not. On Zoom sometimes the setting is set to mute all participants when they enter, which means you think you're entering unmuted, but it's muted and then so the temptation is just to start talking, but you need to make sure that they haven't set the zoom to mute on entry, which is a common setting, and you have to have a Duchenne smile when you enter. A Duchenne smile is a genuine smile. It's genuine because it's not only your mouth but also your eyes. And some people call this a smize. It's like smiling with your eyes. In fact, you can identify a Duchenne smile even without the mouth. You can literally be wearing a mask, and you can tell if someone is legit. And because Zoom doesn't allow you the small talk phase and getting into the room and shaking a hand, as soon as you enter the room, you have to have the Duchenne smile ready to go, and that means you should be thinking about something that pleases you or amuses you, or makes you happy or brings you joy right before you enter into the Zoom. So as soon as the camera comes on, joy, joy in your head, but also joy in your smiles, which is the Duchenne smile. If you don't do it, a fake smile will have to come out. The fake smile, you know, as cheese. Okay, smile, everybody, cheese. The cheese smile is cheesy and is easily detectable. And I don't want you to use that. I want you to have a Duchenne genuine smile as soon as you hit the window. And I don't want to say hey, you are on mute. So those are the two things you have to do. You should also be hardwired, not using the wireless because you don't know if your roommates are going to be watching Zoom, Netflix, or whatever they're doing, they might suck up all your bandwidth. You should have a bland, plain background. Don't put anything back there that's going to be distracting, and don't let the conversation low. Conversations are back and forth, just like this podcast, you want to make sure you have adequate flow back and forth and make sure your answer is short. So each of these vignettes has to be only about one to two minutes. So no matter what question they have, you better get the answer in two minutes. But you have your talking points and they're ready to go, so no matter what question they ask you, you will adapt the talking point to that question, so that you get your points across, your brand must come out no matter what 10 questions they ask you, it's still about you and your brand.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Got it. Another thing, I don't know if you mentioned lighting in that response, I might have just missed that. But what kind of lighting? Sorry, if you could revisit that again?
Dr. Lee:
Yeah. So a lot of people use those ring lights, which produce diffuse background lighting that illuminates you equally. The worst ones are when it's the lighting is changing in the background, and so that means the lighting is changing on you. And if those lighting conditions are dependent on the window, then you're going to be at the mercy of the weather. So it's just way better to be indoors, with no window diffuse lighting. You don't necessarily have to do the ring light thing, but you have to have a diffuse lighting that showcases your face and your body in a diffuse illumination that is not going to be subject to the whims of the weather.
Ryan Sorensen:
Got it. How do you feel about the virtual background? Do you like it or no?
Dr. Lee:
No, it's always better just to have authenticity. Virtual backgrounds already are projecting inauthenticity, and as you know, at the edges of virtual backgrounds sometimes it drops out, and so it makes it look weird. And so it's just better to have a real background that's bland and white, and then you're already projecting authenticity. White. It's neutral. There's no way they can judge you on it, if you pick hot pink, it says something about you. If you pick red, it says something about you. And maybe that's not what you want to be communicating. So just bland. So it's about you, not about your background.
Gianmarco Calderara:
What sort of mistakes are you seeing applicants, you kind of alluded to this earlier, are you seeing interviewees make consistently that really kind of just like stands out to you, that, you know, something that's happening, you know over and over again.
Dr. Lee:
Yeah, the most common mistake is being late. Be early if you can, most of the places they let you in from a waiting room. If you're late, that's already a bad thing. No matter what the program says the social, it matters. And if you can't go to the social, don't say you didn't go. Say I couldn't go today because I had another interview, but I'm going to go to the next interview cycle social because you actually don't have to be synchronous to your interview anymore. You can go to the social even if it's not your cohort, because if you skip it, it says something about you. Don't misspell ophthalmology. It's super important that you use the spell check on ophthalmology for your whole application. The reason is, there are 500 applications, so that first pass is just trying to get rid of people using negative criteria. It is negative criteria. Who didn't get the score, who didn't go to a top 25 medical school. They're just excluding people based on negative criteria, rather than what we should be concentrating on, which is positive criteria based on your brand. One of the worst answers that I hear all the time is “That's a really good question. Can I think about it?” When you say that, “that's a really good question. Can I think about it?” What it really means is you're not prepared. How could there be a question you're prepared for? We gave you all the questions. So you have to have your questions ready, and that means having the vignettes in advance. The other thing that's super, super common is when asked, “Why are you here? Why are you interviewing at our program?” The truth is, you applied to 80 programs, you got 15 interviews, and this was one of them, that is the truth. You cannot say that truth. Everybody is pretending like that's not the truth, even though it is. And therefore you can't say that answer. You must go in advance to their website and find what aligns with your brand. Best, you must have both a personal and a professional reason for sitting there. So when they ask you, why are you visiting us here in insert wherever you can say authentically that you have a friend, cousin, Aunt, you're staying with that person. You came one day earlier, two years ago, or whatever. To look at the town you're familiar with. A personal reason for being there and a professional reason. “On your website, I noticed that you have a very integrated advocacy program for care of the underserved in the prison population or in this Hispanic, Spanish-speaking population only.” That's what I'm interested in, or “I'm really interested in the science of music. I can think of no better city than” insert their city, Los Angeles, New York. “And yesterday I was in town and I saw a jazz band, and I'm really into the science of jazz.” And if they're interested in what you just said, they will reciprocate by saying this. “Tell me more about that.” That's what you're trying to get them to say. “Tell me more about”. If it's just question, answer, question, answer, question, answer. That interview is actually not going very well. And what we'd really like to have them say is, “Oh, I know we're going over here, but let me just tell you one more thing about our program.” Now you know that they have switched to the advocacy mode. They're going into recruitment mode. If however, you hear these words, “Well, you know, I think we're ending a little bit early here. I'm just going to let you get to your next interview early.” That is a very bad sign. You want them to use up all the time, and ideally, they will be spending the last minute recruiting you. That means you did your job. Many applicants tell me, when I ask them “How did it go”, they don't know. They say, “Well, I don't know. Dr Lee, I think it went good,” like no, you should know. Okay, you should know at the end whether they were on the recruitment road or, “Well, look at the time. You can go to your next interview early.” You should know the difference between those two answers.
Ryan Sorensen:
Well, I think we've asked almost all our questions.
Gianmarco Calderara:
I had, I had one more that I just thought of. I know this is kind of a newer topic over recent years. This kind of goes back to the personal statements, but I just thought it'd be interesting to get your take on kind of the implementation now, like AI and everybody having chat GPT. I guess, is there any place in that process where using AI is helpful, or should applicants totally stay away from it? Or kind of, what are your thoughts on that now that that's a tool that is kind of readily available?
Dr. Lee:
So AI is a powerful tool for helping you get started. I think a lot of programs are going to ask you if you used AI to make your statement, so there's going to be some little bit of implicit bias there if you use it. I personally don't have any objection to it. To get started, what you're trying to do, however, is have authenticity, and authenticity cannot come from AI. I personally want AI to do my dishes and take away mundane tasks from my job. I don't want AI to make my music or my art. I want AI to take away the mundane things so that I can do music and art. Once you start letting AI do the music and art, that's the dangerous part, AI can do music and art, but you can kind of tell that it's inauthentic, because really, all of these are large language models that are just predicting what the next word is going to be based on words that were already given in a collective database that has gigabytes of data, but it's really just predicting what someone else has said, and therefore what it thinks it should say in response to a query. And to me, that's not what it's for. It's for getting started, for building a framework. I'm fine with that, but your authentic voice has to come out, and AI cannot deliver that.
Ryan Sorensen:
Just a follow-up question on that. How do you feel about for example, if you're writing your personal statement, and like you said, you tell the AI what your brand is, you put in your personal statement, and you ask for feedback to see if that brand is represented?
Dr. Lee:
I personally am totally fine with that, because you're using it to generate ideas, and then you will make those ideas your own. I'm matching it to what's authentic. I'm totally okay with that, just like I'm gonna tell you with using a dictionary or a thesaurus, that's what it's for. The thesaurus doesn't write your statement, the dictionary doesn't write your statement, and neither should AI, but it can give you ideas. I'd like to use a different word here for passion and enthusiasm than keep writing this word. Okay, thesaurus. I'm fine with that.
Gianmarco Calderara:
Okay, cool. All right. Well, I think that's all the questions that we have. Thank you so much for taking the time to come and talk to us. Was great hearing about all this. I think it's gonna be very helpful in the coming months.
Dr. Lee:
Thanks for having me.
Ryan Sorensen:
Thank you so much. All right. Thanks.