Race Volunteering!

One of my favorite weekend activities is to volunteer at local races.  Not only is it helpful to the community, but it gets me up in the morning AND is a great way to meet other classmates (and upper classmen)!  This Saturday alone I got a free t-shirt, pedometer, measuring cups and more Clif Bars than I could ever eat.  So there are tangible benefits as well!  Saturday was the Step-Out Walk for Diabetes in downtown Cleveland.  Through the Podiatric Association of Diabetes (PAD) a group of about twenty wonderful volunteers signed up!  Sadie Winship and I held down the corner right by the Browns stadium.  While we thought we were pretty excellent traffic controllers, apparently the city of Cleveland disagreed.  After about an hour in, help arrived in the form of two policemen!  I will say that we were “promoted” by a cop by the end of the walk.  We’re still trying to figure out exactly what a promotion entails and whether or not that would get us out of a traffic ticket, but that won’t stop us from bragging about it.

  I encourage everyone to consider volunteering at a race.  All of the clubs are really great resources and so is the AAPSM Race Coordinator - Andrea Mills. 

I would also like to wish a very happy birthday to Sadie who chose to spend hers working the race all day!

 

 

October!

Happy October!  This weekend, a bunch of classmates met up in Brunswick to go to the annual “Pumpkin Village”.  I highly recommend going if you have children.  There were so many activities including hayrides and corn mazes as well as pumpkin and apple picking.  There’s also a slide that claims to be the nation’s largest… which I highly doubt… but it still was a big slide.  For the older crowd there is an Oktoberfest, and even more importantly, a paintball zombie shooting experience. 

My tips:
-get there early (most everything was closing down by 8pm)
-expect large crowds
-buy advance tickets if you want to do the zombie experience
-bring a flashlight
Below: star podiatry pupil Pantano picks out the perfect pumpkin. (talk about some alliteration)

Check out this awesome polka band.  You should have seen Zack Dawson’s moves.

 

 A handful of the gang checking out all the yummy treats we could buy.  I walked away with a half peck of apples!
I hope you all have exciting fall plans! But, of course, keep up the good work studying!

Exams and Flag Football

I’m back! We just finished our fifth exam today and finally are coming up for air.   For the most part I think our class made out pretty well… so long as we passed that ethics final we just took (which is questionable)! 

 Last Saturday, American Association for Women Podiatrists (AAWP) hosted a flag football tournament. And my team WON! (well… we won one game…) We met up bright and early on Saturday morning at the school pavilion. There were eight teams spanning first through third years.  I noticed the older the team, the better and more seriously they played.  There was some intense game planning done by the better squads… I even saw plays being drawn out with leaves.  My team was just impressed enough of us showed up! While others ran drills, we took a very productive team power nap.

 

 

The winners (I think it was Yellow?) got money back towards their t-shirts and a gift certificate to The Winking Lizard!  All in all, everyone had a lot of fun and the tournament was a great way to celebrate the first day of fall!  For the most part, we all walked away healthy (with some sore muscles later that day) although I’m pretty sure I saw a couple rolled ankles…

 

Next weekend we are going to Pumpkin Village and since Halloween is my favorite holiday and fall is my favorite season, I’m already excited!

White Coat Ceremony

White Coat Ceremony

Well the big day finally happened!  After two days of orientation (and a visit or two to the local Fox & Hound) our class was all set for our white coat ceremony. The ceremony symbolizes our transition from undergrad to student doctors. Friends and family met us at the Independence High School auditorium to support us as we took our next steps (podiatry pun intended!) toward our profession as doctors of podiatric medicine.  During the ceremony our class read aloud an oath we created just days before at our orientation.  After receiving our white coats we met at the school for a light reception and more pictures! 
 

After years of dedicated and committed studying, donning the white coats really made me feel like what had brought us here was finally all worth it.  Suddenly, those countless hours of studying for the MCAT, the costly and stressful trips to interviews, and those awkward days of shadowing podiatrists had finally paid off.  Sure, we’ll have an even more difficult next seven years, but now it all means something.  And now we have a big, shining light at the end of the tunnel!  I look forward to spending the next four years with my new classmates and can’t wait to see where the future takes us (… in our pretty white coats)!