A Much Needed Update

It's been a few months since our last post, so I thought I should probably give a quick update.

David has started his 4th year of medical school. He is thinking of going into internal medicine and then specializing in cardiology. Currently he is applying for residency. We should know by December where the Air Force wants to send him for training. In the mean time, he will stay busy with away rotations. He'll be in Dayton, OH, from the end of August to the end of September and then in San Antonio, TX, from the end of October to the end of November. The two hospitals he will be working at are two of the primary locations for Air Force residencies.

As for me, I decided biomedical engineering wasn't for me and stopped taking classes after the first term. From January until June I worked at a coffee shop. I learned a little about coffee and a lot about people.

In January, I was accepted to the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, OH. I will be pursuing a master's of aeronautical engineering. I found out in April that I was awarded a scholarship sponsored by the Department of Defense. The scholarship is called Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation or, more commonly, SMART. Yes, I have a SMART Scholarship. (I know, this lends itself to countless corny jokes....) The scholarship cover tuition, fees, books, and includes a monthly stipend. Now, this is a scholarship for service. That means that they pay for two years of school and then I have to work for the DoD for two years. My sponsor branch is the Air Force, Space and Missile Command, and my sponsor facility is the Los Angeles Air Force Base. They are best known for a small project called GPS.

I was in Monterey, CA, from Sunday to Wednesday at the orientation for my scholarship. Right, three days of orientation for a scholarship. They fully explained the program, the reason it was created, their expectations for us, and gave us time to network with other awardees, and allowed us to meet our mentors. This is a new scholarship (this was the fourth year of awards) but it has the potential to turn into a very competitive and well known award.

I think that about sums up the past few months. Here are pictures of Takoda and Shtiya during one of their calmer moments. They should be fully grown now since they are over one year old.

Takoda

Shtiya