The end of the year is a time for reflection and a time to think about what will make you happy in the upcoming year.

When I was a medical student applying for emergency medicine residency programs, a well-meaning dean gave me some bad advice. I was determining the order of my rank list and was particularly concerned about one program that had an excellent reputation but was in a city I didn’t like. The dean told me, “You’ll be so busy during residency it won’t matter where you live.” Luckily, the advice rubbed me the wrong way, and I wholeheartedly disregarded it. Where you live for your medical training – medical school, residency, or fellowship – is as important as the quality of your training program! The reasons are several-fold:

1. Medical training is extremely time-consuming, and you want to be in a city you can enjoy fully when you’re able to blow off steam.
2. Medical training is extremely stressful, and you want to be in a city where you have social support.
3. Medical training is not completed in a vacuum. Your personal life continues. If you’re single you may meet someone and end up staying in the city where you have trained for the rest of your life (gasp). If you’re in a long-term relationship you may decide to have children or may already have them. Down the road you may not want to relocate your family.

Not everyone gets the opportunity to go to medical school or train in residency and fellowship programs in a city s/he likes. But you can make choices that will increase your chances.