A "consider yourself tagged if you read this" from one of the many blogs I frequent:
10 years ago: I spent the last summer without my not yet husband, living on a very quiet East Campus 2nd West. Oddly, I lived in his room. I worked full time, started working out for the first time in my life, and studied for the MCAT.
9 years ago: I started seriously applying to medical school, perfecting a personal statement that was all too personal, but who wouldn't ride the cancer survivor story if she could?
8 years ago: We graduated from college and had professional movers move us out of our dorm so it could be renovated into some strange, very Asian dorm for the summer. Later that summer spent 9 hours & $1500 in the Elizabeth, NJ IKEA buying an apartment's worth of furniture for the first "home" Ben and I would start.
7 years ago: I quit my job to move to Illinois for medical school. Ben & I packed everything we owned into a 16' Uhaul truck and attached our 8 year-old Saturn to a car transporter in tow. We spent 4 days driving half-way across the country. (Really only a 3rd.)
6 years ago: In the span of 4 weeks we bought our first new car on a whim, got married, bought our first house, and went on a honeymoon. It was also my last summer off.
5 years ago: I spent 4 weeks studying full time for the first of the United States Medical Licensing Exams. While studying I celebrated the birth of my first niece. After an overnight in Chicago, took the exam which was certainly the hardest of the 3. Several days later took a quick vacation to Vegas & the Hoover Dam. In the meantime, my family postponed my grandfather's funeral so I could return from vacation.
4 years ago: I stopped ignoring the fact that I was meant to be a surgery and declared a "major". In an effort to get my name known I spent 8 weeks in Boston on "away" rotations. It was the longest I spent without my husband in the preceding 6 years or since. I sublet my first apartment and lived with strangers. That fall we cheered on the Red Sox as they won the 2004 World Series, their first in 86 years. I passed up the opportunity to actually see the Red Sox win game 4 in St. Louis because I was studying for the second step of the USMLE. And no one pointed out that it might be the game in which the Red Sox won the World Series.
3 years ago: We took the best vacation of our young lives: a two-week cruise from San Juan to San Diego via the Panama Canal. We arrived in San Diego less than 24 hours before I graduated from medical school in Illinois. Weeks later we sold our house and again packed everything we owned into a 16' Uhaul truck, put our 2 year-old Saturn on the car transporter in tow, and drove back to Boston. After unpacking the Uhaul in Boston, but before spending a single night in our new apartment, we drove it to the IKEA in New Haven, CT to buy a new apartment's worth of furniture. It was the last time we would move ourselves.
2 years ago: I finished general surgery internship. I should say it was the hardest year of my life, but I'm not sure it was. We refused to move out of our apartment for a window renovation project until our new apartment building was finished. We then spent $10k to move less than a mile, and have this fabulous view to show for it.
1 year ago: I started 3rd year of general surgery residency with the hardest rotation of the year - vascular nights. Five nights a week I tried kept 25 people from dying. Sometimes I was successful, and then there was the morning I coded two people simultaneously. After the rotation I took the 3rd and final step of the United States Medical Licensing Exams having studied part time for a week. Sadly the two-day, 600-question exam actually felt like a vacation.
Now, consider yourself tagged.