>Only one more week until school starts and it seems more real every day! We are beginning with an Orientation on Monday morning, August 20th at 8:00 a.m. At lunch time there will be a program for all 100 incoming med students put on by the Mississippi Association of Family Medicine to tell us about a program the state offers. Apparently if you commit to practicing family medicine in a rural area of Mississippi for ten years upon completion of your residency, the state will provide you with a $25,000 scholarship for each of your four years in med school! In other words they will give you $100,000 for a ten year commitment. It seems awfully tempting, but at this point I am not wanting to do anything that will limit my options later. Hence I am also passing on the military scholarships that are also quite attractive and apparently readily available.

Monday night we are having a cookout to which the spouses are also invited. I understand that there are clubs or organizations for the spouses of medical students to do things together in, and I hope Angie will be able to make some new friends to help her adjust to the changes in our life that are sure to come.

On Tuesday night, we are having a “White Coat Ceremony” where we will be presented with our first lab coat, as a symbol of our new career. This has me really excited though I am afraid it seems a bit assuming. It will really make things seem real though! After all of this fun sounding stuff we jump right into Gross Anatomy and Biochemistry on Wednesday.