I've graduated and moved

A lot has happened in the last week.

Classes of 2013 and 2014!

Monday and Tuesday we practiced our seminars, and Wednesday we presented. In front of an auditorium overflowing with residents, attendings, and classmates. We sat together, dressed up, in the front two rows on the right side where we never sat before. The students and residents tend to be in the back left corner during grand rounds, so it was unfamiliar territory. But we were all together, cracking jokes and comparing the physical symptoms of nervousness we were each experiencing (sweating palms, shaking hands, and lightheadedness predominated. GI distress threatened but nothing-thankfully-materialized). It would have been impossible doing it alone, but like so many things that we've done over the past two years we made it through together.

The banquet was the next night with even more dressing up, fancy foods, and mingling with so many of the people who have been a part of our education. The evening was topped off with a few speeches from the pathologists we worked with the most and Pam gave a presentation sharing things about each of us. Our class made a short video a few weeks back (I'm not in it! I had to drive to Tennessee that weekend.) and we shared that as well. I'm so glad it got made, one of our classmates did such a good job with the lyrics that it would have been a shame for it not to have been (link pending, the classmate that has the url has been traveling).

So that's how it ended. After that, we handed out gifts and there were a lot of hugs, and quite a bit of lingering. But eventually, we all made our ways to our separate cars and drove away. It happened so fast...the two years, the clinical year itself. And we learned so much and did things we would have never have believed of ourselves. Now it is up to us to take that knowledge and those skills and apply them (for money!). Hopefully we do a good job of representing the program.

As for me... I'll keep blogging my experiences from the transition of student to professional. There is still the certification exam to take (which I'm not thinking about for a while!) and a few other things to touch on.