Interview Season - DONE!

Well...mostly done. Technically Joe has one more interview scheduled for the end of January. (But since it is one week before my due date and two out of three of our babies have come before their due dates we aren't banking on him being able to attend that interview.) So we'll just call interview season DONE and I will do a nice little recap and I can update it later if needed. Onwards...

In the past 6 weeks Joe has attended 7 interviews (+ pre-interview dinners) in 7 different states (Texas, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania). He drove to ALL of these interviews over a period of 22 days and approximately 7,578 miles! By our rough estimate that means he was driving for about 125 hours! (Yikes! I never could have done that...I barely survived the 16 hours I did travel with him. In my current very pregnant state I am a terrible road trip companion...sorry Joe!)  During this time he spent 11 nights in hotels (4 of which were paid for by the residency programs!), 3 nights with friends/acquaintances, 4 nights in kind strangers' homes and 1 night in a Wal-mart parking lot (I was very much opposed to this! But...he survived). And amazingly the weather was NEVER an issue. He had very safe and easy travels...relatively speaking. Oh and the CHEAP gas prices + his Prius definitely helped make this endeavor financially feasible. 

And now because I love to beat a dead horse...the grand totals for the ENTIRE interview season which began waaay back in mid-October...

16 interviews in 11 states which required Joe to drive 11,946 miles across 20 states and few different time zones. I won't even try to total up the number of gas station coffees and McDonald's dollar menu items he consumed...it makes me nauseous just thinking about it! Suffice it to say Joe is ready to stay put for awhile and eat home cooked meals again. And we are happy to have him here. 

This has been quite the experience. Like nothing else we have ever done! It makes applying/interviewing/getting accepted into medical school feel like child's play in comparison. But hopefully come March (when we learn WHERE we are going for residency) it will all feel worth it. At this moment we are just happy to have it done!