Whew. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m glad THAT’s over. I’m talking about Part 1 of the residency series.

Remember that little annoying schoolyard chant that kids (the ones who were terribly sore losers) used to sing…“First the the wooorst, second is the beeeeeest…”? It’s kinda true here regarding this series.

We’ve covered the bad & the ugly sides of residency, and it was TOUGH. It was hard for me to think about, hard to write about, and according to quite a few of you, also hard to read. (SORRY!) It was my “real life,” and I hope and pray that your story is a bit less…dramatic. If you haven’t read Part 1, yet, head back over HERE and check it out.

But today, TODAY, will be different. (Hooray).

This, my friends, is the all about the GOOD. The good side of residency. All the good! There’s so much GOOD!

Oh, and hey, remember my adorable friend, Sarah, from Part 1? Well, she’s back with me as a collaborator here. Yippee!

The Good Side of Residency

Here are the positive skills, attributes, and experiences that Sarah and I took away from residency, and hopefully you will come away with them, too! After all, struggles do seem to make us stronger, right?

1. The collaboration with your spouse

Residency can be a truly collaborative time. Regardless of how difficult it can be to get on the same page as your spouse when you’re there, it feels…good. Really good. I’m not saying it will be that way EVERY DAY, but when it’s happening, those can be big moments in your relationship.

The struggles can have a way of strengthening your bond with your spouse to survive the difficult days of residency. For Sarah, this meant that she and her husband referred to themselves as “Team _(last name)_____” for most everything. They were great about approaching the difficult times as their team because they knew they had to lean on each other (hard).

2. Access to a world of medical knowledge & research

This was (is!) an amazing blessing that I never anticipated. If my husband can’t answer a question about something medical that someone in our fam or friend community is experiencing, he almost always knows someone who can! One of our best friends from med school is a pediatrician, and you better believe he’s received some unfortunate late-night phone calls about our kids. (Fortunately, he’s incredibly gracious and generous with his gift of medical knowledge!)

As a Speech-Language Pathologist myself, though I can’t fully understand the depth of my husband’s medical knowledge, I can appreciate it. He shares it with those in our friendship community in need, and we receive it similarly. Modern medicine is a gift to our world and it is so exciting to be a part of it.

3. Developing meaningful community

Moms and wives in this community need support. Major support. Obviously, your spouse just can’t imagine what it’s like to be you, and vice versa. So you need to find people to walk the road with you. And the great part about that is, well, you can usually find it! Sarah and I both relied heavily on friends and fam for support and community and subsequently met some of the best friends we’ll have for life. So who were these little gems?

• Other medical spouses – Community with other spouses was an intensely helpful outlet of support. They were the only ones who could closely understand the most difficult of days, because they were in them, too.
• The faculty and their wives – I was pleasantly surprised that the faculty and their families were so warm and inviting. No matter the stage of residency, they were constantly throwing us parties or get-togethers and reaching out. There were so many gifted mentors (for both my husband and me). In fact, there was one attending and his family, in particular, that went to church with us and lived in our neighborhood, that reached out and supported us regularly. Our baby even pooped on him directly and he still wanted to be friends with us. (True story). It was enormously encouraging to be close to a family with young kids that had made it (and was thriving) on the other side of training. Makes me want to round up all of you out there and bring you over for a hang in real life.
• Neighbors – There were times when I needed to be rescued and my husband was unable to be there. One day, we’d gotten a heavy delivery that I couldn’t bring inside myself, and a neighbor offered to help. There have been times when my car battery was dead, or someone to feed our cat, etc. Neighbors were there when my husband couldn’t be, at times.

4. Development of inner strength

Residency has a real knack for making you realize that you’re way stronger and more capable of ANYTHING than you thought you were. Sarah talks about all of the jobs she acquired (in addition to her actual job as a Speech-Language Pathologist). She and I both managed bills, completed (or hired out) all home repairs, made whatever calls were necessary for any of the family members, scheduled other home maintenance, managed all illnesses in the family, completed yard work, took care of enormous spiders (okay, that was Sarah, not me. I trap them until the hubs can rescue me). You just realize you are a really tough chick and you have all of these skills that you never expected to have (or really even wanted to have…) It’s exhausting, but it builds confidence that will last a lifetime.

5. Free and delicious food and drinks

Okay, sure. This sounds out of place. But it’s definitely making the list. Why? Because in medical school, you are just so. dirt. poor. You learn to live on next to nothing. Then, when you move up the ladder to residency, you start getting to go to more free social events where you’re served delicious things to eat and drink, with some regularity. It’s really quite…lovely. A nice reward for enduring.

Residency may strip you of your sanity and soul, but at least a few times a year you get some steak with a view.

6. Graduation

No, but seriously, GRADUATION. The actual event of graduation. And not just the year my husband graduated, but all the years. It was my FAVORITE because each year, I was reminded of that which would eventually come for us, and this carried with it so much hope and emotion. I listened and internalized the speeches of the graduating class; how grateful they each were for their experiences and training. It was a constant reassurance that we were in the right place, doing the right thing, no matter how hard it was.

Those speeches changed the way I experienced residency, and I daresay, the level of support that I committed to my husband. In Part 1, I talked about the difficulty of the second year. At graduation during the second year, one of the graduating residents, crying, thanked his wife for supporting him throughout residency in a deeply meaningful way. At that moment, I tried to imagine my husband saying something like that about me, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine it. That year, I had been stubborn, mean, demanding, and self-centered. These were not the adjectives I ever wanted to be associated with. Honestly, I was so proud of him and wanted to make him proud of who I was as well. So, I committed to supporting him on a deeper level. Graduation made a really positive impact on our lives in that regard. Plus, THE VIEW. OMG, THE VIEW.

7. The Research Day

I know it’s probably not the same in every residency, but we were very fortunate to have a period of time where my husband had Fridays mostly off to support his research endeavors. He was able to work from home some of those days. And once he completed or was nearly completed his multiple projects, he then some much-needed time for appointments and self-care. Lucky for him (😂), he finally had a chance to go to the dentist, the eye doctor, and get his driver’s license renewed, etc. It may sound crazy, but a little break, that little inkling of free time, was a significant morale boost for both of us!

8. The Vacation Time

Speaking of morale boosts, the vacation time was BOMB. I won’t go into a ton of detail here because I literally just wrote an entire, long, delicious post about this a couple of weeks ago (read it HERE)! But vacation time is not to be taken lightly. We made the most of ours and it quite literally changed our lives.

Thank you for THAT, residency!

Now, how’s that for some positivity? Residency isn’t looking quite as bad today, is it? It is a character-building experience that leaves you with a new skill-set, and new levels of resiliency, and that’s something to be extremely grateful for.

I’ve decided that I am going to take this little series one step further and do a Part 3 on Saturday, which will be “Residency: The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly. Spouse Survival Guide.” Can’t WAIT to share some tasty tidbits that helped me along the way!!! Have some fun with me on Instagram or Facebook between now and then!

Until then, friends!