Brief Update

Sorry everyone for my lack of blogging. It’s been a crazy few months. Since I last blogged in October, I have completed all of my residency interviews in general surgery! Interview season was exciting, terrifying, exhausting, and expensive. I will find out on March 20 where I will spend the next 5 or 6 years! Actually, I find out IF I matched on March 16, and if I did, WHERE on March 20. Until then, I wait patiently. Residency interviews are interesting and very different than medical school interviews – a lot of the time they were either telling me the best parts of their program, or asking me about who I was, and everyone always asked about jiu jitsu!! It’s a good feeling to know that they think you’re qualified since you made it to the interview, and at that point they just want to make sure you’re the kind of person who would fit into their program.  Life during fourth year has been pretty great, and I can say with 100% confidence I have not worked for a full day since the end of October. Storing up sleep for those 80+ hours I start in July!

As for jiu jitsu, my shoulder started acting up in November from an AC separation I had back on the mats in March, so I had to cut way back on training. Plus, I was gone so often for interviews. In December I got a steroid shot into the shoulder, and it was incredible the pain relief I got! So I’m officially back on the mats. Our academy is growing, especially in terms of how many women there are! A few months back four of my jiu jitsu sisters got promoted to blue belt, so there are officially 6 blue belt females at our academy and a white belt! That’s quite a change from the days when I first started and was the only girl in the adult class. It’s great that more women are getting into the sport! And especially because I usually have at least 3 great training partners close to my size when I train.

The Ribeiro Toledo female blue belts

Just figured I’d give a brief update. Next week I’ll talk about the promotion ceremony we had a while ago, and introduce you to the new Ribeiro black belts! Stay tuned.

Oh, and I learned to shoot! Not bad, I’d say for my first time, my favorite part is the unintentionally, but perfectly placed shot to the right carotid artery in the right neck!