Caffeine Free in Med 3

Ring on the finger

I know that I haven't posted for a long time - but I have an excellent excuse. I got engaged last month. He did the whole one knee, holding up the box, confessing his love. If you ask me, I'll tell you the whole mushy story. (There are no perfect moments in life, just moments you want to remember perfectly)

So while things were heating up relationship-wise in my life, I was ending my 4th year block of semi-serious rotations. When I say 'semi-serious,' I mean that because MICU and ER were my only two really rough time consuming rotations this year. ICU was July, August was off to do stuff for EM and Step 2, September was hard work in the ED, and October/November were both outpatient stuff. I probably should have been blogging more in that time, but I was getting ready to do interviews and pretend to do wedding planning.

My interviewing actually started with one interview each during my October and November months. I'd have done more in November, but I spent an AMA weekend in Hawaii which used up all my time off. This month I am practicing procedures on cadavers for an anatomy elective that lets me do LOTS of interviews. January will certainly be worse because I think I have 2-3 interviews per week that month. I do have 17-18 interviews and I am going to go on EVERY ONE. (Any med student will tell you that going on that many interviews is kind of crazy.)

It costs a lot to interview, since I have to repeatedly fly to different cities in a pretty large area. I applied Minnesota to North Carolina and was able to drive to about half of my interviews. About half the places provide a hotel and half don't - occasionally I get to stay with family or friends, but it generally costs 150-200 dollars per interview. I originally budgeted about 3,000 for all of interviewing, but it looks like I need to up that amount.

My new plan goes like this. I'll keep interviewing through January, and then I have a February away outpatient rotation near his family/my future in-laws. I'll do an inpatient March month of anesthesia - match that month - and get married in April! Obviously move and graduate med school.

So will I have to change the name of my blog?

posted by Allie @ 3:08 PM