Editor's Note: Chelsey Baldwin of Little River is a second-year medical student. This column follows the journey of her class in becoming doctors.

"Chelsey, do you feel like a fish out of water?" my grandmother asked me as I woke from my afternoon nap after a day of walking around the sleepy and unforgivingly hot town of Beaufort. I think she knows I'm partially-addicted to the busy lifestyle I've grown accustomed to during the past year.

I yawned and grinned a little, "Well Gram, I think I could actually get rather used to this." While I still visit the hospital every weekday, currently I reside on the third floor of the clinical science building from nine to five working to produce a paper on the effectiveness of treating very small cerebral aneurysms. I still feel as if I have so much time to live life. I've felt so good over the past few weeks of summer, enjoying evenings of baseball, beer, bike rides, movies and dinner with friends; it has been wonderful and everything that summer should be.

Beyond the daily niceties of summer, I've also been blessed enough to share some special times with my close girlfriends and fellow soon-to-be second years Tracy Tholanikunnel and Alex Farish. Tracy and I recently made the trip to Marion to witness Alex's marriage to her college sweetheart and current first-year MUSC dental school student, Christopher Farish.

Tracy and I, despite the best intentions, got lost and were characteristically late. We blame the hotel we made reservations at for incidentally being in the middle of a name change and therefore effectively disguising itself from us and Google maps and for sending us 20 minutes out of the way in going to the service. However, we managed to scramble into the church just minutes before the service began and in perfect timing to accidentally catch the bride before she walked down the isle. We squealed with delight at this sheer luck and jumped at our chance to kiss Alex, cooing over how beautiful she was.

To avoid premature tears, we were shooed off to our seats. Tracy and I looked over at each other during the service with tears in our eyes and grins across our faces. We had spent the last year hearing Alex talk about the details of this day, offering our opinions and support where we could, and getting to know her wonderful fiancée. Therefore at that moment, in the church of Alex's childhood, we couldn't have been more happy or proud of her.

"Our baby is growing up," Tracy had said during our drive up to Marion. But in reality Alex has always been the grown-up of our circle of friends. She's always had a perspective that I have found to be calming and endearing. The big picture of life has always been her gift. While Tracy and I were drowning and festering in the minor details, Alex kept us grounded.

We each had our strengths and for that reason we became extremely dependent upon one another throughout the year. Tracy, for instance, is extremely hard working and sensitive to others. She has given me perspective even when I didn't exactly want to hear it. Yet her ability to force me to see what isn't apparent has undoubtedly made me a better person. I like to think "the wad," as we jokingly started calling ourselves after discovering the surgical term the "mobile wad of three," a name given to a grouping of muscles in the flexor compartment of the forearm, was one of the major reasons I survived first year unscathed.

The nickname, the wad, has stuck with us, half because we might as well have shouted it from the roof top the night it stumbled across my lips during our musculoskeletal post-test party and half for the fact that we have rarely spent time on campus without one another after our early meeting in the first block. Finding each other downright hilarious and unrelentingly supportive has made for a friendship that I am incredibly grateful for.

The 'mobile wad of three' includes Alex Farish, from left, Tracy Tholanikunnel and Chelsey Baldwin.

Therefore watching Alex, in all her glory, make her way down the aisle during her early June wedding was a time of great pride for our little wad. Needless to say, we ate, we drank, and were very merry that night. Seeing Alex enveloped in all the love of her family and friends from high school, undergraduate, and now medical school was nothing short of what she deserved. It was a magical night and added to the contented feeling summer has graced me with.
With my sister just finishing her boards and my best friend from undergraduate, Katie Gyurcsik, enjoying success at her job and my parents doing well, I have a lot to be proud of. I have great friends and family and thank summer every day for finally allowing me the time to be able to focus on them.