My 1st Residency

As I have gotten some questions about this, I thought I'd clarify. The program I'm in divides the classes into two halves. At the end of each half, they have you attend a residency. The residencies are only a week long and take place around the country. I have one class left in the first half and will be completing that this summer. We decided it would be vastly easier to do a residency with the baby in me than out of me. At the end of September, I'll fly to Phoenix for a week. Rob has taken the time off work and will stay home with the kids.

I did the first half of my classes in about 18 months, but I think we're going to try and stretch the second half out a bit longer, maybe 2.5 years. I'll only take one class a quarter instead of doubling up every other quarter and maybe every once in a while I'll take a summer off :) When I finish my classes and my residencies, I start my internships (700 hours stretched over 3 quarters). We had planned it so I would start my internships about 2 months after Jack started school full-time and finish a week after school let out for the summer. If we stick to that plan, the baby will only be about 18 months old.

There is a 6 year cap on my program, but as I've been working my way through it at a pretty good pace, I have a bit of wiggle room. I think we're going to try and push starting my residencies back another year. That will still give me 6 months leeway for emergencies or whatever, but the baby will be almost 3 before I start. The first quarter of internships I have to do 100 hours over 10 weeks, which only translates to about 10 hours a week. Easy peasy :) The next two quarters I'll have to do 300 hours each over 10 weeks, so that's about 30 hours a week. That will be a bit harder, but it's only 20 weeks total. I've had two friends offer to provide childcare for the baby and my parents may be down here too, so there will be options :)