This weekend Lisa and I flew to Fresno to attend Abi’s “White Coat Pinning Ceremony”

This recognized a phase in Abi’s doctorate where she has passed sufficient exams to start her clinical rotations. She has almost completed her first year (of three) and in two months starts gaining practical experience as a Physical Therapist at an outpatient practice.

The weather in Fresno was really nice (around 70°F or 21°C) warm and sunny so we got some great pictures after the ceremony. The ceremony was nice (and short) and her professors helped her into her white coat and gave her a pin – the White Coat has to be given back on Monday lol.

It was great seeing where she studies and we saw where she spends all her time (either in a classroom, a lab with her cadaver or the library where she studies)

The sad part of this bit of her education is she doesn’t really have any down time over summer and is expected to work in a PT practice in-between school semesters without any pay!

This feels very wrong to me, a lot of the students in the doctorate program are borrowing money to pay for their education and pretty much for 3 years they aren’t given the opportunity to earn any money. All the clinical rotations are considered part of their schooling/education. Yet the PT Practices get a student PT for free!

Oh well, it’s an important part of the process I guess and it’s only 3 years.

Anyway, we had a great (short) visit, and it was lovely to see her in Fresno.

Here are some of the pictures we took over the weekend:

We are so proud of Abi. We just got back from San Diego where we saw her graduate Magna Cum Laude from San Diego State University (SDSU) with a Batchelor’s Degree in Kinesiology.
For Abi, it’s a couple of months downtime before she heads to Fresno State University to get her doctorate in Physical Therapy.

Lisa, James and I had a wonderful weekend, lots of sun, sea, food and drink celebrating with Abi, her boyfriend Aidan and his family, and friends and family from Washington State and England (Thank you Nikki and Craig and Tania and Manesh for coming so far).

She’s now over halfway there, just 3 more years to go.

I took the camera and captured some pictures of her around the university and down on the beach. SDSU is a really pretty university with lots of white stucco buildings with Spanish tile roofs, makes a great backdrop for graduation pictures.

Here are a few shots (from the many I captured).

Again, congratulations Abi.