I experienced that and I am thankful that it happened,
else I would not have stumbled upon Google Voice. The only unfortunate part was
that I really did not realized the potential of it until late in the interview
season, to be frank towards the end.
So before I go into the details let me explain the
reason why this post is here. The first thing that most of us do when our plane
lands in the States is to hunt for a USA mobile service provider. Once that is
done, it becomes the mode of contact for you and almost everyone else you get
in touch with. But have you ever thought that once you are done with your
electives, and it’s time to come back how will they contact you or vice versa?
I do agree WhatsApp is a wise alternative, but it is generally registered on your
home country number, which I do not think you will share with all of them
except for the residents or your colleagues. Here is where Google Voice comes
to the rescue.
So once you have finalized a decent USA mobile service
provider and have the sim in hand, it is the ideal time to set up your Google
Voice account. The different options for buying a sim are mentioned in my other
post here. Registering for Google Voice
is pretty simple and straightforward and the link is here. Once registered,
there is an option to opt for a Google Voice mobile number, where you get
pretty cool phone numbers to choose from to be frank. My number for example is
+1-916-936-3451 (+1-916-93NEIL1).
You can try various combinations and options to get a cool one for yourself. Once
you have finished fiddling around to get a number, I would recommend you share this number with all your colleagues instead
of the USA service provider’s number. The reason being, should anyone call you it
automatically gets forwarded to your USA service provider’s number and,
supposing you are unable to answer your phone when they call, Voice offers a
voicemail service which even transcribes the voicemail to text which you can
read when you do check your phone.
The advantage of Google Voice is that it does not
lapse like the number that you get from your service provider should you not
recharge it for 2-3 months. I mean once you are back in your home country, why will you want
to recharge your US number and not even use it? So even though your US number
will be disconnected, should people message or call your Google voice number
you will still receive the messages or calls on Voice or Hangouts, whichever is
convenient for you. Last but not the least you can also call and send messages
(SMS) from your Google Voice number as long as you have a working internet
connection.
Hope this post helps future USMLE aspirants who can
make complete use of this simple but potentially amazing offering from Google.
Disclaimer – I am not being paid anything by Google
for this :P
