Hearing her mother say this, Xie Wanying recalled how time had flown by like a white horse galloping past, as the busy moments on the clinical front passed so swiftly, it was already the fourth half-year mark and another new year was approaching.

In fact, over the past couple of days, teachers had been sending them text messages to remind interns about the upcoming New Year time.

This was because, before the New Year, there were gatherings and celebratory dinners arranged by various departments and hospitals. Teachers were texting them to invite them back to the departments they interned at for New Year dinner gatherings.

The Hepatobiliary Surgery department was the first to send her a New Year greeting text. Senior Tao asked Dr. He to represent and invited not just her but also Student Pan, who happened to be interning at Hepatobiliary Surgery, to join the department’s New Year dinner.

Next, Teacher Xiao Sun, entrusted by Teacher Tan, asked her to return early to General Surgery Department Two for a meal. The New Year dinner for General Surgery Department Two was scheduled early, probably to avoid clashing with other department activities.

Although she is not an internal medicine student, she also received invitations from Teacher Xin from the Respiratory Department and Teacher Lin from the Cardiology Department.

Just with these dinner gatherings, her and her classmates’ schedules were packed full during this period, estimating they might get tired of eating big meals every day.

At Beidou Third Hospital, not only did she and Student Geng have New Year dinner plans with Teacher Du, but Doctor Peng from the Obstetrics Department also sent a text inviting the two of them over for the department’s dinner.

Student Geng was most thrilled about receiving an invitation to a dinner with the three orthopedic teachers from Guoxie. Of course, Student Geng told her that the orthopedic teachers wanted him to bring her along to the meal.

So many departments invited their classmates to dinner, except for the Cardiothoracic Surgery and Neurosurgery departments. According to their classmates, these two specialized departments were in a state of uncertainty. The uncertainty lies in that before the new surgery building was completed, plans hadn’t been formalized. These two major departments were full in terms of personnel quota, with no recruitment plans for the coming year, so they didn’t plan on inviting medical students for New Year dinner this year.

Generally, when leadership invites medical students to a meal, medical students think that the department likely intends to recruit someone, thus creating opportunities to build relationships and establish connections with the students in advance.

Not every medical student on the clinical front has the opportunity to receive a dinner invitation from a teacher. She and her classmates were already lucky enough. Because the competition among medical students upon graduation continued to intensify, securing a position at a top-tier nationally-ranked hospital seemed endlessly challenging. It was common to see classmates wear worried expressions, and Xie Wanying’s own stress was not alleviated much.

She noticed that Teacher Fu didn’t send her a New Year dinner invitation.

Apart from her, the class monitor who was keen on joining Neurosurgery might be even more anxious to death than she was. Yue Wentong had even less of a fallback option compared to her and only wished to follow Senior Cao. The issue was that after Senior Cao accepted the genius Song Xueling, the recruitment standards got even higher.

For medical students, only after finding a job post-graduation can one truly feel they’ve boarded the ship and can finally feel at ease.

"Pack your things tomorrow. Li Xuan has booked our train tickets for the day after. We might arrive at your side of the city at the west station by evening," Sun Rongfang said to her daughter, "Not sure if you’ll be off work by then?"

Now, the timing clashed.

The surgery scheduled the day after tomorrow afternoon was uncertain as to how long it would take, given it involved a critically ill patient.

Hearing her daughter’s somewhat hesitant voice from the other side, Sun Rongfang immediately understood, "It’s alright if you can’t pick us up. Li Xuan will be picking us up. She said she has a car now; it’s very convenient. Focus on your work and studies; they’re important."