NEW YORK, NY – By the time Dr. Johnny “The Hammer” Utah, a fourth-year orthopedic resident at SUNY, Empire State, was applying for his sports fellowship he considered himself a bit of an expert in interviewing. Whether it was for med school or ortho residency, At 6’4″, 240 lbs, the interviews always went the same: “Wow, you’re a big guy, did you play any sports in college?”
He would typically regale the often awestruck interview panel with epic analogies of how “being down 20-14 on the opponents 20-yard line with 4 minutes left in the high school Super Bowl” taught him “empathy for patients who had just lost a loved one” or “how getting ‘hit’ with a terminal cancer diagnosis was like being blindsided by a middle linebacker when you’re ‘3rd and long’ in the final minutes of the Rose Bowl.”
But this time was different for the “All-American” physician. This time they had sent in two middle-aged “lady doctors” to interview him for his sports fellowship. Big John was immediately thrown off of his game when they seemed unimpressed by neither his athletic achievements nor his “legendary” status on sorority row as a pre-med.
Things really came to a peak of awkward tension when the more senior interviewer and fellowship program director, unwittingly asked him about his score of “69” on the prior year’s in-service exam. “ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS!” Dr. Utah shouted at the agitated-appearing interviewer with sweat forming on his brow. The interviewer did not reciprocate his high-five attempt, stating, “No, it’s actually a pretty low score.”
Sensing things were not going his way, Dr. Utah turned to his most reliable attribute… feats of strength. Kissing his bilateral biceps in a stepwise fashion, the now shirtless Utah generously offered the horrified interviewers “two tickets to the gunshow.”
After completing his 15th one-armed push-up on the floor of the interview room, with his Brooks Brothers tie now cinched around his forehead in what he referred to as “Rambo mode,” the resident physician popped up and grabbed a full-sized phone book off of the program director’s desk effortlessly ripping it in half.
He proudly provided each of the ladies with one half of the destroyed phone book and exclaimed, “UTAH… OUT!” as he walked out of the interview, navy blazer thrown over his glistening back. As he exited the office Utah was overheard to whisper, “Nailed it,” as he high-fived and shattered the full-sized human skeleton model on display.
