By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content Director

On a recent family trip to the city where my wife attended medical school, we took a tour of the campus and slipped into the medical center building where she took most of her first- and second-year classes.

We gazed at portraits of former professors that were hung on the walls, some of whom she remembered, and she reminisced to our kids about campus life and about all the places she used to haunt with her classmates. For a brief moment, we opened the doors of the main auditorium in the medical school and stepped inside, remembering her white coat ceremony and explaining to the children about how, four years later, this was also the location where she and her classmates had their Match Day celebration.

In that space all those years ago, it was an hour of nerves and labored breathing and loud celebrations and, in some cases, disappointed smiles. A day after our impromptu visit to her medical school, the 2024 Match Day occurred. Around the country, it was also a time of nerves and rapid heartbeats and celebrations and, in some cases, sorrow.

For the past two years, I’ve put together the best Match Day reactions I could find on the internet (here’s the 2023 version and the 2022 version), because it’s fun to watch other people have fun and to celebrate their successes from afar. I’m doing it again for 2024.

 

Like most years, most people who posted their Match results on social media were in a celebratory mood. They either matched at one of their top choices or they had successfully navigated the process with their significant other. Others shared their disappointment. Still others reflected on their complex journeys.

Here were some of the best tweets I found from this year’s Match Day celebrations (and if you're only looking at this in your email inbox, you're going to need to click on one of the above links so you can fully experience the tweets and videos in your browser).

 

The Best Match Day Reactions

First, the unfettered joy.

 

For some, it was the most meaningful day they’ve experienced.

 

Some took time out of their busy schedules to learn their fate.

Shout out to the attendings who get it
byu/0freak18 inmedicalschool

 

Even pets joined in on the celebrations.

 

Some had to wait an extra, unexpected year for this moment.

 

Some even invoked some of the wisest philosophers of the 21st century.

 

It was an exciting day for program directors as well, as at least one harkened back to a momentous day from 85 years ago.

 

But not everybody was thrilled.

(He later went 0-for-4 in the SOAP.)

 

Some experienced ALL of the emotions.

 

And finally, here are two more images of jubilation and tears as we start the countdown to Match Day 2025.

 

Money Song of the Week

As many of us try to figure out how to pay as little tax as possible before we settle up with the government on Tax Day, some people try to argue that paying extra taxes is kind of unfair. Especially if you’re a musician who doesn’t have that much money in the first place.

That seems to be the point of this MU330 song from 1996, The Punisher/Downtown, which rails against the idea of exploitative entities withholding the band’s money that it earned for playing gigs. As the tune goes,

“When we play downtown/No we never pay the tax/Cuz we'd rather go to jail/Than to pay those stinkin' rats . . . Dirty bar owners, politicians/Taking money from musicians”

I imagine there’s at least some truth in those lyrics, especially since some of the band had dropped out of college to work exclusively on music. As singer/guitarist Dan Potthast told Kenneth Partridge:

“Somewhere I read somebody talking about songwriting, or just writing in general, and they said, ‘Try to write about stuff you know.’ So, I’m like, ‘Alright. I'll stick to things that I directly observe around me, rather than trying to imagine some kind of fake scenario.’ And that’s worked for me.”

Here’s the rest of the tune.

(FYI, there are two curse words in the embedded song below.)

For a brief time in the mid to late 1990s, ska got plenty of mainstream attention, and bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish cashed in on the momentum that landing in the MTV rotation and headlining The Warped Tour could provide. MU330, however, never reached that level of success. MU330 could headline a small club, but that was about it.

“We were already on the path to being the size we were going to be,” Potthast said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, when the big ska boom happens, all these bands got showered with wealth and notoriety.’ It was more like any other time. There’s going to be bands that are going to break through and be popular.”

Of course, more earnings equals more taxes. And we all know how MU330 feels about paying taxes.

More information here:

Every Money Song of the Week Ever Published

 

Tweet of the Week

Yet another great benefit. In case you missed the news of the $1 billion donation that will provide free tuition at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York City, here you go.

What do you remember about your own Match Day experience? Would you have done anything differently?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at [email protected].]