Courtney Collins, G.P.

These are my motivations in life: to understand and appreciate the human spirit; to learn about myself and the world around me; to exist in health and balance; and to be a responsible citizen. I believe they influence all that I do.
- From one of my personal statements, November 2008

That's right. I applied to 36 family practice programs, and 0 pediatrics programs. I had to decide. Here is (the very short version of) what I came up with:

I really love pediatrics (convincing opening, I know), and if I am to be honest, a part of me is sad to be letting it go; however, I have been growing increasingly excited about family practice. I am excited specifically about providing primary care to a diversity of patients - this has become the most important thing for me. I am really looking forward to forming relationships with patients, and being able to advocate for them effectively. I am eager to be able to watch families grow-up and grow old, and I know I will be able to incorporate pediatrics into what I am doing. I am also excited that my career and residency should be flexible in where and how I work.

And now I am sounding too much like those personal letters.

I heard its going to snow here next week. I am pretty excited about that too.

the boss of the world.

Today an appointed representative of the QUEEN prorogued (new word for me) our parliament until January 26, 2009, and I am blogging for the first time since September 15, 2008. To add one more dated fact, this year will be my first since December 1999 that I will not write an exam (or several) on my last day of school before the winter holidays.

But, back to blogging. As with most breaks I have taken - I have been THINKING a great deal about blogging, and my lack of posts are not at all correlated with a lack of goings on. I'm blaming CaRMS (the Canadian Residency Matching Service) mostly. In the last few months, my reflective energies have been sucked dry by my necessary authorship of approximately nine different versions of my "personal statement." These are 500-1500 word essays required by the residency programs in which you are to talk about yourself, career goals, reason for choosing the program, why they should choose you etc.etc.etc. Despite the fact that the politics of writing about yourself as a part of an application makes it a bit of a chore - I don't hate it. I actually found that being forced to really consider my qualities, and motivations and goals, was quite a clarifying process.

Ready for another date? I submitted my 36 applications to family practice residency programs all over Canada on December 1, 2008 - freeing up plenty of writing time and energy. I am determined to use it to keep this page going and prevent it from ending up in the same state as the dozen or so decorated, spiral bound notebooks of my childhood, each with one or two entries outlining how my mom made me eat a piece of ham with fat on it, or I had to practice piano instead of playing road hockey or other important and dramatic events.

I can't promise drama, but I going to aim for consistency.