medical monday : i was in your shoes

I am so glad to have found this little blog hop last year!  Like many of you, I started looking for advice during the residency interview season.  My husband was a 4th year in Kentucky and I was terrified of what was to come!  Thankfully, I ran across this great resource of others going through the same thing (or who went through it at one point).  They have been a continuous source of support both directly and indirectly since I started participating, and I hope those of you new to this find the same thing.  

Since it is officially interview season once again, I thought I would share links to my old posts from our journey through it last year in case you are here looking for that sort of information.  If not, I invite you to check out some of the other topics to the right and say hello.  There are also ways to follow my little blog shown on the right :-).  

Welcome to Medical Monday!

Links:

the beginning of a new normal

my first ever post explaining why I am blogging in the first place...

before residency: interviews

the basic layout of an interview's schedule and advice on how to get the most out of the experience

rank order list : our dice throw

how I felt the day we submitted the list

the Match : what is it?

exactly what this sounds like... an explanation of what the Match is and advice on making your rank order list.

the Match : tears of joy

opening the Match letter.  These pictures still make me tear up.

well whadya know?!

Our big announcement we were holding in during the Match, and what will hopefully be coming to fruition in the next week!

4th years and SOs... enjoy this time.  Have fun with the process.  I know how stressful this time is, there is more to our story than what you are able to read on here since I started this blog right after we finished with the interviews.  Many of you are unknowingly meeting the people that you are going to be great friends with in a year from now.  Some of you may not have such a happy ending.  But it is all worth it.  Every step of this process is worth it.  Don't worry about the small moments that you are worried you messed up or missed... it is all just part of it.  As a spouse that attended some of the trips with my husband, I know this really well.

It was the interview for what is now our home.  We had never heard of this small city in South Carolina before.  The program had us staying in a nice hotel in the heart of their downtown.  We weren't sure what I was supposed to do about the resident dinner that night... it just wasn't clear to us in the invitation.  So I found a sushi restaurant a few blocks away and grabbed my book.  I walked to the restaurant alone (in the middle of the night...and felt completely safe in this new place).  Shortly after ordering my husband was texting to say I had been invited and there were other wives there.  I felt awful.  I really wished I could be there with him to meet these people; hoping I wasn't messing anything up by NOT being there.  But I put it out of my mind and enjoyed my dinner alone, followed by a walk through the downtown.  It was a clear night in January, there were lights in all of the trees, everything but the restaurants was closed.  But it was just so charming.  I went back to the hotel and knew this is where I wanted us to be.  There was no time the next day for us to explore before we had to rush to the next interview location, so my accidental night out was all we had to go on with our feelings on location.  But it was enough.  With just a little bit of convincing, my husband ranked Greenville as our #1.  This place had everything we were looking for, and I hadn't even met the people.  

Several months later we moved here, and during orientation week, I was 'remembered' by another spouse as "the one that went to dinner alone".  While slightly embarrassed for just a second to be remembered that way... I don't mind.  It is one of the reasons we are here.

And we are so, so, happy.