Introducing...Stella!  We finally got our puppy about a month ago, and life has been crazy ever since!  Her full name is Stella Trix (Harry Potter, anyone?) and she is definitely a crazy puppy!  She is a lot of fun though, and loves people and animals alike.  It's crazy to watch how she grows seemingly every day--she's going to be huge someday!

In other news, I just finished up my month of Clinical Anesthesiology, and it confirmed my career choice.  I love it.  Seeing patients in the morning, thinking about how best to anesthetize them and take care of their pain, and then waking them up afterwards is really great.  And for all those people who think Anesthesiologists just sit behind the curtain and play Sudoku--really not true. I was shocked at how often I was flying around, giving medications, recording vitals, and monitoring the entire physiology of the patient.  It's a lot of work, but I think it's going to be a really rewarding and exciting career.  Now I'm on day #1 of my vacation month (WOO!), but have to take Step 2 in about 3 weeks...dang.  But my fellow classmates say it's a lot more fun than studying for Step 1, and then I get a real vacation for about a week, though I will have to be tidying up my application and personal statement for submission on September 1.  It's hard to believe that I'm actually applying for residency.  I met with a few M0s from Hope College  (though they will be M1s tomorrow...congrats guys!), and it brought me back to that hot August day in 2008 when I moved to Ann Arbor and started this whole journey. Perhaps it's a bit too early to start getting nostalgic, but med school has been fun, challenging, exciting and trying all at the same time--but I could not imagine a better place or better people to have experienced this with!

As fall approaches, the process of interviewing starts again, something I am excited to participate in this year!  M3 year doesn't really have time for students to interview prospective candidates, but M4 year is chock-full of it--can't wait to see the next batch start coming through! Any [email protected]

GO BLUE!