What to Expect When You're Matching

With only one week (YIKES) until Match Day, I have gathered as much information about what to expect as possible.  I now share this info with you:

First of all, Match Day (March 17th) is not the only day to be worried about.  Monday, March 14th, is the day that all graduating medical students find out if they did or did not match.  We will be assuming Sam successfully matches because, honestly, I am about to lose my mind from the anxiety and stress of this whole process just worrying which program he'll get into let alone if he'll get into one at all.

• Match is preceded by breakfast (I assume bagels, croissants, pastries, etc.) donated by UCI the medical school
• It takes place outside on campus, but I'm not entirely sure where
• The match results are made public across the country at 9am PST, at which point students are called one at a time in alphabetical order by last name to read their match in front of their classmates, friends, and family. 
• If you’re not the first or second person in the class you can actually log into the match website and find out where you are headed prior to stepping on the stage.  (If you, like me, wondered if Sam would do this let me put your mind to rest. Sam assured me neither he nor I will be checking the results before hand.)
• Immediately following Sam's big annoucement (which I promise I will take pictures and video of) we will call/text loved ones, so if you want to put yourself on the list please let me know.  I don't want to offend anyone who ends up reading the news on my facebook.  :-)
• Match is followed by a BBQ put on by the current 3^rd year students.

Later that evening, Sam and I are looking forward to having dinner at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club in Newport Beach to celebrate with our very dear friends, the Grants.  When they found out we didn’t have family coming for match day (I also just found out families/friends come to Match Day), Matt and his amazing parents extended an invitation to Sam and I to join  them for dinner.  Emily will be matching into Pediatrics, and she and her husband (both Lamorinda kids themselves) have been incredible friends to Sam and throughout the whole medical school experience so I think it's very fitting to be celebrating the end of the era with them.

The post-Vegas lack of sleep and building suspense RE: Match are a bad combination which has tensions running HIGH this week.  Not to mention, I had my final presentation for one of my classes on Tuesday and one of my group mates completely botched his portion.  It was epically bad, like the worst group presentation I have ever been a part of.  And since I spent so much time last week working on analyzing our data, this week I'm playing catch up with all my reading and also trying to fill in my take-home final.  Can't this whole Match thing just be over?  Pretty please?