On their very first day of medical school, Audrey Jensen and Xavier Jean entered TBL 1 at the W.E. Upjohn M.D. Campus and took their seats – assigned in alphabetical order – next to one another.
That moment, on an August morning in 2015, turned out to be what Jensen and Jean refer to now as “a happy accident.”
“We became quick friends and ended up in the same study group,” said Jensen, a Kalamazoo native and alumna of Western Michigan University. “We studied with our group every night and then, eventually, we became more than friends.”
The two have been dating since November of their first year at WMed. Jean said he and Jensen realized quickly they shared similar interests and enjoyed spending time together.
“We’re both outdoorsy people and we’ve always been able to find things to do together that we enjoy,” said Jean, an alumnus of Northeastern University in Boston who grew up near Montreal before his family moved to the east coast of the U.S.
Last year, Jensen and Jean became engaged. Their wedding is set for May 18, 2019, one week after they graduate from WMed.
Now, as Match Day quickly approaches, Jensen and Jean are among seven students in the MD Class of 2019 who will take part in the Couples Match and seek to complete their residency training at the same institution or in the same city.
In doing so, Jensen and Jean will begin their journey as resident physicians the same way they began medical school – together and side-by-side.
“We’re excited for Match Day and the chance to find out where we’re going to spend the next five to seven years,” said Jensen, who is pursuing a residency in Anesthesiology as Jean hopes to complete his training in General Surgery. “I think there’s a lot of anxiety around it but there’s also a lot of excitement.”
Match Day for the Class of 2019 will be held on Friday, March 15, 2019, at the Air Zoo in Portage. On Saturday, May 11, 2019, the students will graduate from WMed during a ceremony at the Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo.
After Match Day and graduation, on July 1, 2019, the students will begin practicing medicine in the specialty of their choice as residents in a clinical setting under the supervision of fully licensed physicians.
The Main Residency Match is an annual process that begins in the fall for applicants, usually in the final year of medical school, when they apply to residency programs at which they would like to train. Program directors review applications and conduct candidate interviews in the fall and early winter. From mid-January to late February, applicants submit to the National Residency Match Program (NRMP) their rank order lists of preferred programs, and program directors rank applicants in order of preference for training. The NRMP uses a computerized mathematical algorithm to match applicants with programs using the preferences expressed on their ranked lists.
According to the NRMP, participating in the Match as a couple allows two applicants to link their rank order lists. Those lists are then used to form pairs of program choices that are considered by the algorithm and couples will match to the most preferred pair of programs on their rank order lists where each applicant is offered a position.
Much like Jensen and Jean, their classmates, Ashley Akkal and Jeff Friedman, said they are filled with a mix of excitement and dread about Match Day, and the unknowns that come with opening an envelope that will determine the course of the next several years of their lives together.
“It’s like wanting to jump for joy and vomit all at the same time,” said Friedman, who grew up in Ypsilanti and is an alumnus of the University of Michigan.
Akkal and Friedman, as well as Dagan Hammer and Elizabeth Kinsella are taking part in the Couples Match along with Jensen and Jean. Hiba Samaha, also a member of the Class of 2019, is taking part in the Couples Match with her fiancé, Derek Stodolak, a fourth-year student at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.
Akkal and Friedman have been dating since October 2015, just a few months after arriving to WMed. Their connection grew during shared study sessions and Friedman said he remembers noticing Akkal from their first day at the W.E. Upjohn M.D. Campus.
Friedman didn’t stand out as quickly to Akkal, he said.
“She doesn’t remember me from the first month,” he joked.
Still, Akkal said it didn’t take long for her and Friedman to connect. They were in a team-based learning group together after they arrived at WMed and the first apartments they lived in in Kalamazoo were only a few blocks from each other. They studied together frequently with a group of their classmates.
They shared their first date at Latitude 42, a microbrewery and restaurant in Portage. In January, Friedman popped the question to Akkal while the two were vacationing in Charleston, South Carolina. Akkal said Friedman presented her with a ring on the same plantation where the romantic movie, “The Notebook,” was filmed.
“It was really nice,” Akkal said. “Charleston was bright and sunny that day.”
Now, as they prepare for Match Day, Akkal has her eyes on a residency in Pediatrics while Friedman hopes to complete his training in Anesthesiology.
“It’s really exciting,” said Akkal, a Chicago native and alumna of the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Four years have gone by and it doesn’t feel like it. At the same time, it does feel like it. To find out on Match Day where we’re going will be exciting because it’s been one of those things that you thought might not ever happen and now it’s here.”
As she anticipates Match Day and graduation, and the beginning of residency training, Samaha said she feels like each step is part of what will prove to be an “awesome” 2019 for her, her fiancé and her classmates.
She and Stodolak were engaged in October and a wedding is planned for August in Michigan. The couple met in 2013 while they were both doing clinical research at St. Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor. When it came time to apply to medical school, Samaha said she and Stodolak hoped to land at the same institution or, at the very least, in cities that were not too far apart.
Samaha is seeking to complete her residency training in either Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine or Pediatrics. Meanwhile, Stodolak is hoping to complete his training in Psychiatry.
“For me, it has been really nice to have someone because medical school just takes up so much of your life,” said Samaha, who is a Michigan native and an alumna of Eastern Michigan University. “It was nice having a partner who never felt neglected by that because they were going through the same exact thing.”
The opportunity to take part in Match Day and, later, graduation in May, will be the realization of a dream that Samaha has had since she was four or five years. From that young age, she said she always wanted to be a doctor.
“I feel like 2019 has so many awesome things to offer,” Samaha said. “All of these major changes are going to come at once but it feels really nice because there is an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment from completing medical school and starting something new in your professional and personal life.
“It’s like new chapters starting.”