My first words of advice are to calm down and relax. Not honoring surgery is not the end all, be all of matching into ortho. No matter how good your knowledge or subQ sutures are, sometimes that may not be enough, or there may be someone else who is better. I probably wouldn't go around bragging about suturing better than residents either, even if you really are. Just kinda comes off as arrogant. I didn't honor surgery, didn't honor medicine, didn't have the board scores that you have, yet I still matched. Neither did half of my classmates who matched into ortho. I hope that I've stroked your ego enough and alleviated your insecurities. =)

PS. My next door neighbor is just like you. Asks pretty much the same type of questions, and is just looking for someone to tell him that everything is gonna be ok. That is why I responded with some facetiousness.

Fear not, young Jedi. I too successfully matched with the P in surgery. And peds. And family practice. And OB/GYN. Additionally, my Step 1 score was almost identical to yours, and I similarly had internal medicine (gasp) turn out to be the only third year core clerkship that I honored. That being said, it's important to optimize the rest of your application. By this I mean honor as many rotations as you can, especially in ortho. Do aways and get great letters. If you take Step 2 early, take the time and do well. Do all the research you can stand.

The bottom line is that clinical clerkship evaluations in my experience are unbelievably random and totally subjective. Additionally, I think orthopaedic surgeons are more likely to listen to their own kind, and I'm not sure how much if any weight they put in what general surgeons have to say. Thus I feel it is far better to have made a good impression on your future colleagues in orthopaedics than to second guess what might have been had you only attained a better "level of knowledge" about the Roux en Y anastamosis (or whatever the hell you do with the stool-forming organs). You win some, you lose some, but at the end of the day all you can hope for is to have done the best you could. Just relax, be yourself, and let the chips fall where they may.

hey eta570 sent you a PM...

even though both general surgery and orthopedics are both 'surgery', for some reason i really disliked general surgery and the people in it, while i very much enjoy ortho and get along with ortho people. watchin 'gently done' colonic anastamoses really bored the heck out of me and was burdensome to sit and watch, while i'd feel myself being that orthopaedic surgeon who figures out a way to properly reduce and wire a fracture together - like a pitcher on the sidelines watching the baseball game and wishing they were starting that day.

also i don't really get along or socialize much with gen surgs, while for some reason i click more with ortho's...
excuse me for trying to generalize here, but it seems like gen surgs try to intellectualize everything..., while orthos ignore outside 'bs' and just do hard work intellectually. several gen surgs irritated me and i never joined in on their 'intellectual' discussions because i could not find any 'profound opinions' about the meaning of life or anything else to satisfy them. i think this made me look 'dumb'.

has anyone else noticed any differences here... i just hope that during my ai, i will be working with people i understand better like at the ortho dept at my institution, so i won't get labelled as a 'marginal student' again.

Hey eta570

can you possibly refrain from posting such irrelevant messages....i speak for many of us....your posts are annoying.

one more thing:
pitchers....hang out in either the "bullpen" or dug out

burp - don't read it then