Let’s just say that Friday boards segued into quite a night… and afternoon of celebration for completing the “easy” day of boards. If celebration seems a little premature, it’s because it was. We were far too excited to be sharing this experience together that we got a little ahead of ourselves with festivities. Although, I must say that we did get some group studying in during the afternoon. It was short-lived, but we used our time efficiently.

Part of our Friday night celebration at Duck City

Saturday morning was a lot slower paced for many of us, as we didn’t start our round of testing that day until 2pm. So we had a nice slow start to our day, drank some bulletproof coffee and cranked out some squats and turkish get-ups in the workout room of our airbnb. I’ll be honest, the sweat-session’s main aim was to clear our heads after a night of festivities. It certainly did the trick, too, but just to be safe a few of us drank a Bloody Mary as well.

Three of us still had a few hours to kill before our boards and the Michigan State – Ohio State (oh, how I hate Ohio State) game was on. So we devised a plan to have our cake and eat it too. We studied and quizzed each other during the commercial breaks and enjoyed the game (even though MSU got slaughtered).

Enjoying our Saturday night of Celebration!

Finally it was time, so we checked in and waited about two hours before actually starting our journey through 25 different rooms comprised of adjusting skills, history-taking, physical exam, and orthopedics. More than anything, it was just extremely tiring. Running into a few things you don’t know is inevitable, so just shake it off and move on. The main piece of advice I can give for this round of boards is to do whatever it takes to maintain a clear head.

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, for my cohort that mainly consisted of ruminating about boards as little as possible while in Iowa. Either way, we all walked out of Palmer that evening, feeling triumphant and truly ready to celebrate.