Jessica update: 11/05/05

From: Jessica Westerholm [mailto:westj@mcmaster.ca]
Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 3:45 PM
To: Jessica Westerholm
Subject: Last 6 weeks of clerkship!


Hi everyone

I'm no longer drowning in paperwork, as my residency applications are all finished. I'll hear about interviews sometime in December. I ended up applying to 10 General Surgery programs, all over Canada, and we'll see what ends up happening. I don't really have a first choice of programs right now, but am looking forward to checking out all the schools as I go for interviews in January.

In the meantime, I've finished all my core placements except for Internal Medicine, which starts on Monday. That'll take me right through till Christmas, at which point I will breathe an exhausted sigh of relief. Medicine is known to be a pretty demanding rotation, both in terms of busyness during the day, and being on call. So you can pray for strength. Fortunately, after that I'll get a full 2 weeks off for Christmas. So I'm looking forward to learning a lot over these next 6 weeks, and then having a nice break. After Christmas, I'll have electives, which are usually much more humane than our clerkship rotations (what I've been doing for the last year), with a lot less pressure. And residency interviews will happen in January, too - it'll be busy.

In terms of prayer items, please pray for strength for this last 6 weeks, which will be pretty grueling. I'd also appreciate continued prayer about direction for residency, and favour in the eyes of program directors and others who have decision-making power. It's very comforting to know that the Lord has His hands on the whole process, and that He knows where I'm to train. I need to do my part, but it's up to Him to work things out according to His plan, so I don't need to stress about that. Also, I need to arrange my electives for January/February (7 weeks' worth), and I need some wisdom and direction about what I'm to do for that time.

Thanks so much for all your prayers. May the joy of the Lord be your strength today.

Blessings

Jessica