Dr. Luis Garcia

So I decided to go for the most difficult piece, which was training the United States in surgery.

And as you know, as a foreign medical graduate, that's not easy.

So it meant leaving the comfort zone for me.

But it also meant being exposed to challenges and sacrifices that I never thought I was going to face.

And those sacrifices and challenges really allowed me to be a lot of who I am.

For example, at that point, this is before email and before internet, where you needed to send your application and said,

with the staff and send it via regular mail.

So guess what?

There were 220 programs in the United States.

I applied to all of it.

And I got two interviews.

One of the interviews was at the University of North Dakota.

And I get the letter back in the mail mid-December.

And of course, I'm all excited because I'm getting an interview and I open it and it's dated like two months before I got it.

So, of course, I called the University of North Dakota and they tell me, well, Dr. Garcia, I'm sorry, but we already finished our interview process.

So I just went like, you know, I just got the letter.

I'm excited, this and that.

And they told me, okay, this is Friday.

And they tell me, okay, Dr. Becker, the program director at the time, is going to interview you on Monday over the phone.

And I'm thinking, that's not going to happen.