Bittersweet

I can honestly say that this is a hard post to write.

First, some wonderful news.  We matched and we now know where we are going.  Even better, we matched in a combined program... so we'll only have to move once in the next five years.  That itself is a huge relief.

Sometime in June, we'll be hauling all of our stuff (minus the couches) and two little guys to the Detroit area. Scott's program is well-known in his field and was at the top of our list. So, we can honestly say that we are thrilled to have been matched there.  It's close to family and I already know the area.  Plus, I'll already have my college roommate close by.  Though, I'm sad to leave my other college roommate who is within driving distance.

However, with our celebrations, comes some tears and sadness. It's sinking in that I'll have to change jobs, go back on the job hunt, and leave a great place.  I have some of the most supportive coworkers, and they will be impossible to replace.  I love that I work at a public school and prayer/family support is a regular conversation.  I only hope to find that to be a regular conversation at my next school.

We're excited for a new start. Maybe I'll live within a half hour to my workplace, maybe we'll find a great new house (we feel like we got lucky in Kalamazoo), and maybe we'll love the new city.  It's a lot of unknown that we need to decide soon.  I have that anxious feeling that June is going to come all too fast (and the program is already asking for our vacation days!).

As a final note, my family and friends, you are amazing. Thank you for everything: thoughts, prayers, support, encouragement, etc.

We Matched!

1/3 of the countdown is complete (Match Day & Spring Break are the other two).
I teach (now on my lunch break), but planned my day out with my kids so that I could be sitting at my computer desk at 12pm when the email was due to hit our inbox. That's how important it was. :)  Scott and I celebrated via text and let out out a huge sigh of relief when this came through.

It's nice and vague, but just what we want to hear.  Now, we know that we'll get an answer for where we are placed for transitional year and for the other four years.

If you happen to know someone who did not receive a similar letter today, please be extremely kind.  Their stress level is extremely high as they frantically find a place through the SOAP process.  In another blog I read, it was recommended to order pizza and send it to their house.  What a nice gesture!  Many forget to take the time to eat, sleep, etc.  It's an exhausting time.  

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers!

Almost There!

I keep debating whether to post or not.  Part of me is exhausted from constantly telling everyone that we have zero updates. But, at the same time, match week is now here. There's so much anxiety to this week, but I've made my schedule jam packed so that I can just get to Friday.  I think I have every dinner accounted for, and every evening taken up with activities.

I don't even want to tell you how many times I've opened this app on my phone lately.  Slowly waiting. On Friday, I finally can tell everyone if I'll be working the same job next year, Scott will finally be able to tell people his residency spot (we hope), and we can finally decide if and where we need to look for places to live for the next few years.   Once we find out, we have 3ish months to figure out jobs, houses, and other fun grown-up stuff. 

Tomorrow is an even bigger day for med students.  Around noon, they find out if they match.  From there, it's either a stressful week of making sure you make call after call to have a place to announce on Friday, or you continue to wait patiently to find out where on Friday.  

Keep watching the blog.  We'll try to keep all of our faithful friends and family as updated as we can.

Prayers are very much appreciated.  Here's what you can pray for:

• Now-Monday: Pray that we match.  We certainly don't want to have that unnecessary stress. 
• Monday-Friday: Pray that we are comfortable with where we are sent. Once it happens, we're done.  No second guessing, reconsidering, etc.  We have to be comfortable with keeping jobs, changing jobs, moving states, staying in the same state, going out of comfort zone, etc.

Much love,

Match Day...

I'm sorry for the radio silence.  I'm back to working on my master's, and I feel like I'm living out of my car most of the time. I'm gearing up for Snow day #5 since Christmas Break.  Sadly, my house is still not clean.  However, I have gone through my entire closet (clothes to be coming soon, family!) and finished our taxes. The house will be done tomorrow...

Anyway, I've had so many questions on this... so here's what has been on our minds the past few months.  After driving 6,000+ miles, it's sometimes exhausting hearing things like, "has he heard anything yet?"  I completely understand why you would ask, but I think it gets annoying because we don't know what to say about the whole process.  Here goes my elementary understanding of the process...

First, some definitions:
Residency:  A 5 year program that gives a small stipend.  For the first time, Scott will be referred to as Doctor, have a longer white coat, and we won't be paying the school for him to get some experience.
Transitional Year: His first year of 5 years.  Because he's going into a specialized field, they use the first year to acquaint you with a variety of jobs in different aspects of the medical field.
Combined Program or Categorical Program: A residency program that includes the transitional year in the same hospital.  In our specific field, this isn't common (meaning we have a good possibility of two moves very soon).

Now, for the algorithm (After all of my math courses, this algorithm makes complete sense, but gives me goosebumps every time).

Our side of the Algorithm:
Scott sent out a good chunk of applications to residency programs of our choosing.  We chose based on their record, their "name", and most importantly, their location (see last post). We heard back, and set out on the interviewing journey. Unfortunately, most programs are not combined, so we had both the transitional year interviews and the main residency interviews.  Now, we are currently assembling, disassembling, revising, and finalizing our residency rank list.  Here, Scott and I scrutinize each place based on their pros and cons to develop some type of ordered list of our favorite places.  If we really don't like a place, we can't put it on our list because there is a chance we could get sent there.  So, we only rank those places that we are comfortable living and working.  For me, most include a job change (or 2) ... so it's all rather baffling.  Then, for each place, we create a separate transitional year list.  So, if my rank looks like this: "Awesome, Good, Semi-Good,"  I then have a separate rank for Awesome's first year: "Awesome #2, Good #2, Semi-Good #2."  Once we are satisfied by our list, we can submit it to the website.  Then, as the game plays out, you call, pray, and send notes indicating that you think of them highly.  It's a game in every sense of the word, except that you have to wait months to figure out if you won and it's not much fun.

Their side of the Algorithm:
While we're fumbling away, they are doing the same.  They decide if they want to rank each applicant.  Many will rank 6-10 people for each 1 spot.. but you are at home praying that they choose to rank you high.

Once deadlines have passed, the computer starts the algorithm.  If Scott's #1 ranks him #1, then we're done. Or, the algorithm continues.  It goes to person #2, and if person #2 ranks #1 first, then they match.  It continues all of this until most people are matched.  Then, it repeats for the transitional year.

Dun...Dun...Dun... Match Week!On Monday,  March 17th, we are notified whether or not we matched.  Daunting, right?  You're given a note saying "Congratulations," or "Sorry." If you receive the "Sorry" letter, you go through the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP).  In a way, this is like a mini-match, where applicants who didn't match try for places that didn't fill their open residency spots. It is unlikely that you interviewed at this program or had even thought of living there. Boy, I hope we are not in that position.

On Friday, March 21st, we have a fancy lunch.  Here, they tell you where your next 1 & 4 years will be.  There's no "accepting" or "denying" the invitation.  You are going there.  That's it.

The hardest part is the unknown.  I'm a planner... so it kills me that we have no idea what we're doing next year until March 21st.  Then, once we're at that date, it's all depicted for us.  There's no stage of "warming up to the idea." It's just important we are both on the same page and willing to go wherever we're sent and hope that it's one of our top choices.

So, there you have it.  If you'd like some explanations without my commentary, visit this site.  They offer some great, in-depth explanations of the whole process.  If you browse long enough, you find out that there's a good chance we will go through this again for fellowship.  If you ask us about this, sorry in advance for the vague answers.  We don't really know what to say.  It could go really well, but we don't want to spend time really hoping and praying that we get sent to our top choice.  What if we don't?  Who knows...

Lately.

I know, I know... I've been MIA lately.  Action definitely describes it. I've spent many, many late school nights at school getting the year up and running, working my once-a-week second job, and trying to figure out this whole year of med school.

...And what a year it is.  We're quickly approaching the heavy interview season.  Let me describe how this works.  Scott has applied to many programs.  With his desired career choice, he applied for two programs. The first is considered a transitional year.  For the first year of residency, he'll be gaining experience in all different types of general medicine before going on to more specialized training in later years.  Some places offer training with residency and transitional year combined, but most want you trained somewhere in your first year before going into the program.  We're eagerly awaiting both, as we'll be finished taking out loans and finally starting to feel as though we're both in careers.

He will be interviewing at more than 15 locations.  Now, some med students map looks crazier than ours... that's for sure.  We like our families, so we want to stay relatively close.  Therefore, we only sent out applications to those states in the Midwest.  Despite having a close-to-home map, imagine traveling all over these states in one month.  One long month of food on the go and sifting through many albums on the iPod... all to get dressed up in a fancy suit and have your next years of your life in the hands of interviewers.  Eeks.

Here's his destinations.... we got all the way to Destination Y on Google Maps.  We could add "Z" and another 325 miles when you factor in our annual trip to Canada for New Years.

Yep, that's a whopping 6,344 miles and 97 hours in the car (please let the weather stay nice and our cars stay working).  Because Google Maps was getting angry at me, I didn't factor in any special trips back home to see the lonely wife and cats.

So, busy months ahead.  The good news? You'll probably get some blog articles while I'm home.  At least, that's the hope. What do these interviews amount to? Match day! I'll explain more on that once Scott and I get over the fact that we're adding that many miles in the snow to our vehicles.

As for the wife? I have school until 9pm the next week as I meet with all my parents for conferences.  Then, it's Thanksgiving break. :)

Lots of love,

Step 2 [in progress]

Good Morning!
I have yet to succeed at Scott & Selena Sundays (see last blog post), but I'm close. Today was more appropriate.

Scott is off and started in his Step 2 exam.  While we got there approximately 45 minutes early, he officially started 10 minutes ago (at least, according to the paper).  Meanwhile, I'm at the mall to waste 9 hours.  I know, what husband would send their wife to the mall for nine hours?! I think it's just his way of making up for all the studying time in our home the last few weeks.  :)  I'll get to the Step 2 exam in a moment, but first, my current situation:

In preparation for the day, I charged up my laptop so that I could work on my job at Barnes & Noble for a while on my laptop. However, I plugged my laptop in the outlet that is also for the lamp at home...meaning it is controlled by a switch, which was turned off because it was night time. So, I get here to a completely dead laptop.  Thus, I got out of my comfy chair and set out to look for a place with a plug.  Of course, Barnes & Noble strategically place their plugs so that they are behind a bookshelf, or in front of a teller so that they can "monitor your usage.".  Ugh. So, for those that know me well, I'm sure you can picture this... I'm currently crouched in a corner on the floor mooching both the internet and the electricity from a plug that has just enough room for the connection.  Thankfully, it's upstairs and in a corner of a weird book section, so maybe I'll go unnoticed.

Anyway, here's a bit about Scott's exam.  It is scheduled for 9.5 hours.  I drive him to these tests so that he doesn't have that stress, but they make you leave your phone in the car (which he did before he could see my nice reminder about relaxing)... so I'm just going to assume it will take him 9 hours to finish.  During that nine hours, you have to strategically plan to take short breaks for food and bathroom. But, you also don't want to take too long on breaks so that you have time to review your answers before submission.

There's so many factors that go into prepping of the test... not to mention the grueling 16 hour study days for the last month and a half (no joke).  First, the packed food. You can have a tiny locker for snacks.  So, we covered some basic food groups with the list: pbj sandwich, cheez-it's, granola bars, banana, peanut butter M&M's (necessary), coke, gatorade, water, and a nice surprise note from me.The morning is killer, too.  So many decisions... like what to wear.  Seriously, Scott analyzed every article of clothing to make sure it was the most comfortable.  Then, there's the morning routine.  You basically stress yourself out making sure that your bodily functions are working okay so much that you cause said bodily functions to start acting weird...causing panic (Scott's family... I'm sure you're getting a laugh here). Needless to say, it was a stressful morning.  But, he's in, surely doing amazing, but analyzing every question with second guesses.

Send lots of prayers and thoughts for Scott today.  We'll leave for Chicago tomorrow for yet another test on Wednesday. This one is much lighter and said to be easier, but it's yet another hoop.  Friday is "us" time before he leaves for Cincinnati, so I'm patiently and eagerly awaiting that date night.  

Orie & Floyd are sad to see study time go away for a bit.  I have no idea what they'll do without Scott for a month. The boys have been in heaven, as this has been a month of lots of cuddle time while he sits at his desk.  They have quite the routine.

I heard the comment box works down there, so feel free to give it a try. ;)

If it ain't the cat's MEOW!

Believe it or not, that is an expression of disbelief.  Not sure of the origin, but it seems appropriate for this post.

To be honest, I'm almost embarrassed to be back here. It has been over a year.  In that time, I've moved to a new (but familiar) city, started and finished my second year of teaching fifth grade, been through two summers, traveled to the west coast for the first time (!), and have probably juggled life's big mysteries several times.  Okay, maybe not the last one... but we've been trying to map out our futures. Sorry, family, this isn't a post with a baby announcement.

I'd say the biggest announcement is that we've tackled third year medical school.
In short,

Pros:

• Schedule varies so much that while some months seem unbelievable, the lighter rotations are so welcomed
• Leading to more "us" time
• Had a relaxing spring break
• Clearer future ahead
• Step 1 is over! 
• Better stories

Cons:

• Step 2 is looming
• Residency is drawing close, so every step/misstep is a big deal
• Residency choices attract more stress
• Away rotations are coming up!

I've kept busy as well.  Last year, I tackled multiple jobs at once keeping me busy, but I'm ready to relax a bit.  I seem too young to say that, but I welcomed the opportunity to work from home most of this summer.  I feel like I can finally clean up and cook some decent meals. 

Here's an update on our boys.  Orie Porie is still...well... Orie, and the Floydster has quite the personality.  I recently bought them a new toy, and Floyd is downright aggressive, but Orie has trouble knowing how to play or gracefully snag the toy (he spends more time dancing in circles). 

 This is pretty lame and lacks detail for the first post back, but I hope to update more regularly and regain my four followers! Blog posts/Facebook tells me to update you of all my goals to keep myself accountable.  I'm going to shoot for one a week.  So, now it's up to you to hold me accountable.  Maybe we should start Scott & Selena Sundays.  Post Secret had some luck with their Sunday-only blog posts.
 Thoughts? (Disclaimer: Great start - it's Saturday.. but I'll be out of town tomorrow... ).

Happy early Birthday to my Mother in Law & and Happy late Birthday to my niece... and Happy early/belated Birthday to everyone else since I missed it over this past year.

I would love to hear from all of you,