Acceptance into the Doctoral Program

Mid-March, Steve had an interview with the program director at St. Mary's University for entrance into the doctoral program for psychology and.... HE GOT IN!!! There was a small catch that both Steve and I weren't expecting or planning. The program is 5 years long - 4 years of coursework two days a week year-round with multiple internships and the fifth year is a full-time paid internship. When Steve and I had originally discussed the program, we thought that the worse case scenario would have him commuting to the Cities every day for his internship. During Steve's interview, the program director wanted to be sensitive to the needs of our family and explained that the internship was based on a national match system - similar to medical students - and that there was no guarantee that his internship would be located in Minnesota. For the match system, the student chooses three internships and each internship chooses three applicants and hopefully you "match". If not, try again next year and in the meantime, you would need to start paying off the tens of thousands of dollars invested. Grrr.... After a little more research, Steve found three approved internship sites in Minnesota - one in Rochester at the Federal Medical Center (and he is too old to qualify) - one in the cities, and one in Duluth. Of note, there are no internships in Iowa. Plus, there are over 4,000 doctoral students and only 3,200 internship slots. Pretty much every scenario that we looked at would require a move from Rochester and nearly every scenario made me sick to my stomach. Since both of us grew up in Rochester and most of our family is here, we couldn't even fathom what life would be like somewhere else. Especially this last year, we've relied heavily on our family to help us and we're relied upon as well. Just this week, Steve's grandma fell and she was found to have a hairline fracture in her ankle and needed help getting home from the ER. Tonight, we're going over there to do her laundry and deliver some banana bread. I just can't imagine not being able to help in some way. Anyway, after a lot of thought and prayer, Steve has decided to turn St. Mary's down. While we're grieving the loss of a dream of his (he's the first person in his family to have a Master's Degree and he wanted to be the first with a Doctorate) he's relieved that after 6 years of coursework, graduation is in sight! And I couldn't be more proud of all that he's accomplished!