The first day of the rest of their lives

A few months ago, Uncle Chrissy did some crazy traveling to interview for his residency at 9 different hospitals. When he was done, he filled out a preference form to rank them in the order in which he would most care to spend the next 3 to 5 years of his life there. Simultaneously, the hospitals filled out their own ranking sheets. All parties submitted these numbers to a centralized system where they were ruminated upon by an all-seeing, all-knowing computer, whose job it is to match the student ranking lists with the hospital ranking lists. I imagine it to be much like that fortune-telling machine in the movie Big, where you put in your quarter (as it were) and out comes, instead of your fortune, an inescapable and binding truth.

Today is Match Day, that singular event in a med student's life when, more or less, the rest of his life is decided for him. Today it is revealed to everyone for whom Computor the Magnificent did find a match where they will go to live and work and become a really real doctor. And get paid for it.

Around lunchtime today my beautiful and pregnant sister-in-law texted me to let me know that Uncle Chrissy scored a spot in his first-choice program at Indiana University. I haven't personally spoken to Chrissy and Jean, but I'm pretty sure they are beside themselves with glee. There are many, many more positive ramifications to this news, but immediately this means that they can stay right next to all their family and friends, something particularly important with little Jonas in the works. It also means they won't have to move anywhere far away when Jonas is, like, two weeks old. And perhaps the craziest of all, it also means that they get to proceed full-force with the offer they've already made on their first house (that's been accepted) in Indianapolis.

So yay for Chrissy and Jean!