Is Your Affective Presence Killing Your Dream?

You can have the best scores and grade, but personality counts TL;DR * Affective presence is the lasting and stable impressions your interaction partners get from you.* Your scores and grades only get you in the door.* It’s your personality that makes you a medical student, and later, a doctor.  So make sure you’re giving off the right vibes!* Listener Kalmen reminds us of a paths for some students who don’t match. Dave continues his ruminations about why a very few people don’t match into residency.  He thinks that some of those people (who weren’t the victims of luck or strategic errors) were burdened by a negative affective presence–the feelings that others have about interpersonal interactions with them. Which brings up (at least) two questions:  how do you know if people have a negative impression of your affective presence?  And even if you do notice, how do you fix it?  M4 Holly Conger, M3 Emma Barr, and M1s Albert Pedroza and Rick Gardner help him hash it out. And reacting to Dave’s other concerns about graduating students having additional paths if they don’t match, listener Kalmen writes in to [email protected] to point out that some states do have such a path.  These states offer licensing for so-called associate or assistant physicians. Aside from the confusing name of this kind of practitioner, Dave is down with that because he just wants everyone to be happy.  But many–including Holly–aren’t so sure. We Want to Hear From You How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email [email protected].  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!