White Coat Ceremony

I feel bad for my parents. I thought that their visit on Sunday/Monday would be a nice respite from the harsh heat and humidity of Maryland’s August. Naturally (because the Levin’s universe is ruled by Murphy’s Law), Sunday was the hottest and most humid day of the year in Columbus. To add insult to injury, it rained a bit during the icecream social after the ceremony.

On Sunday I dragged my parents across a proportionally small—but still sizeable—segment of the OSU campus. The first stop on the tour was the RPAC. It’s the most immense gym I have ever seen in my life. If there were a gym atop Mount Olympus to which the greek gods belonged, it would have been something like this.

Our trek under the hot sun had caused most of the water in our bodies to take up residence in our clothes, so we decided upon reaching the medical campus to head back almost immediately.

Orientation spans four days—Monday through Thursday—and mainly involves lectures on things like professionalism, course overviews, student panels, tech and financial aid info, and of course social bonding exercises. Monday morning I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Joanne Lynn, a neurologist who’s also chair for Student Life and thus actively involved with the students. She’s very gregarious (thus I wasn’t surprised to discover that she was the 2007 Professor of the Year) and invited me to shadow her, and to get involved with the neurology interest group.

The White Coat Ceremony was held at 4pm later that day. We walked across the stage, shook some doctors’ hands, handed one our coat and had him slip it on us. I was hoping to death I wouldn’t trip and fall, but luckily the bar ended up being set pretty low. One guy failed to unbutton his whitecoat, and another dude wore a coat about 10 sizes too small (they arrived late and didn’t have time to check/exchange their coats). I moseyed across stage without incident, and so began my long journey…