Last year at this time, I took a few hours off from work to drive with my husband to his medical school.

We found seats in a lecture room packed full of medical students and doctors and med school professors and their assorted wives and husbands and children.

The air was electric with nervous energy. My husband and his classmates joked and talked and laughed… but it was all tinged with an edge of panic.

The head of the medical school – whose title I’ve forgotten, but whose face and kind mannerisms I’ll never forget – had some games for the students to play. Prizes were given out.

My husband’s classmates put on several skits – songs, dances, impressions of professors, satires of the med school life.

All in the name of distracting themselves from the clock, which was ticking ever-so-slowly down to noon…

All in the name of avoiding the long table in the front of the room, covered with envelopes. (My husband’s name was on one of those envelopes – we checked first thing when we got there.)

The students counted down the final seconds, like some bizarre New Year’s party in the middle of March.

And I guess it was a New Year’s celebration of sorts.

Match Day. The day when med students find out where they’re headed for residency.

The road to residency is a long one. Fourth year of med school is filled with interviews and rejections and attempts to rank one stellar program over another. At the end of it all, the med student has no control over anything. She submits her rank list and hopes that one of the programs she wanted also wanted her.

On Match Day, all med students in the country (I believe) find out which residency program wanted them.

This is the beginning. The beginning of their lives as physicians. The beginning of a new, intensive level of training. The beginning of the big, terrifying Responsibility that comes with controlling your patients’ care.

It often means a new city. New colleagues. New computer systems to learn. New honeycombed hospitals to master.

At 12:00 noon on the dot, the tension was thick as honey. Nearly 100 future doctors surged toward that table and all those envelopes.

Almost immediately, you could hear cheers and whooping sounds as my husband’s classmates ripped open their envelopes and were awarded first or second choice.

My husband – the man who opens the mail right there at the mailbox… who opens new jars of peanut butter the instant we unpack them… who opens DVDs or CDs immediately after leaving Best Buy – brought his envelope back from the table to open it. He lifted out the sheet of paper with gentle, slow fingers as joyful tears and gleeful hugs erupted around us.

He read it. He smiled. He handed it to me.

And suddenly – after months of travel and worry and uncertainty – we could breathe again.

Happy Match Day, future doctors and spouses! I hope you get your first pick.