White Coat Ceremony

After three years of arduous coursework, the happy day finally came when James got to don his white coat! In medical school I know they do this ceremony at the start, but in vet school the students spend the first three years doing coursework and then the last year they get to practice in rotations. For this reason, the white coat ceremony is held right after the finals of their third year to prepare them for their rounds the following Monday.

So our little cheering section joined about 900 other people who came from around the world to support their loved ones. Thankfully, we got seats!

 Besides not being very excited about dressing up in church clothes, we were THRILLED to celebrate our hard-working Poppy!

After several speeches, they had the students come up one by one to get their coats. As soon as they announced it, I jumped out of me seat to take a picture of James crossing the stage only...to realize that we had about 30 minutes to wait before it was our turn (seeing as our last name starts with S).

But his moment finally came!

 After everyone got their moment in the spotlight, the class stood and took the oath to be professional and ethical and blah blah.

Then they ceremony ended and they booted all of the guests out so that they could take some glamour shots of the class:

Once he was finally a free man, we decided that we needed a picture of our own!

But since the lighting was so drab inside, we decided to have another go at it in the great outdoors:

James's first round is soft tissue surgery so he spends about 16 hours a day in this hospital:

He has worked every day of the week (only about five hours on Saturdays and Sundays at least, unless it is his turn to work weekends) so we don't get to see his good-looking face that often anymore. Boo! The boys have it worse than I do, since James leaves before they wake up, (5:30am) and then gets home after they go to bed (around 9pm. However, he then often has to go back in around 11pm for more patient care). Do I sound whiny at all? Actually, the first week was a slap in the face for me (since I got my hopes up that we would get to see him more) but since then we have adjusted and are doing just fine. He loves what he is doing and he gets to work with great people so that makes it all okay.

 We hear that not all of the rotations (they range from 2-4 weeks each) are as demanding time-wise and we certainly hope that is the case! Either way though, we are very grateful to be just a year away from finishing. It hasn't been easy, but it is amazing to see his life-long dream coming true.

 Way to go, James!