Another Doctor in the Family

When writing about Abigail's Match Day in March, I mentioned that her medical school commencement ceremony would be in May. Well, that happened this weekend, for which our family made the trip to Miami, Florida. (Abigail attended the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine on the island of St. Maarten, but their administrative offices are in Miami, so that's also where they hold commencement each spring.)

Susan and our daughters got to Miami on Friday and relaxed together at a house that we had rented for the weekend. Because of work, I waited until Saturday to fly in and join them. After Saturday's commencement, yesterday we had a relaxing pool day (our rental had a backyard pool), and today we returned home. Check out some photos below of the festivities in Florida.

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AUC holds their commencement ceremony at the Watsco Center at the University of Miami. Before the ceremony started, it was fun to see "Dr. Abigail Moberg" appear in rotation on the digital scoreboard overhead! Also, her photo and biography appeared in the program because she was the student speaker! Her classmates had voted ahead of time and selected her to represent them.

Because Abigail was a speaker, AUC reserved seating for us near the stage. Our location gave us a good view of her as she processed in with her classmates.

Fun fact: Because AUC's main campus is on a Caribbean island, they have a Miami drum corps play "Pomp and Circumstance" on steel drums in an arrangement that has a distinctive island flair. It was great!

Here is Abigail just a few steps away from being hooded on stage by one of the medical school faculty. (Like her classmates, she stood facing the audience while a professor draped her doctoral hood over her head and around her shoulders.) Her official graduation was August 29, 2025, upon completion of all her requirements ... but it seemed to make it "official" to see the hooding and hear the "Dr. Abigail Grace Moberg" announced to the crowd!

Abigail's commencement address was terrific: full of insider references that were meaningful to her classmates and professors while still being accessible to the rest of us in the crowd, and a nice balance of looking back and looking forward.

Family photo: Jacob (Suzanna's fiancé), Suzanna, Dr. Abigail, Hillary, Susan, and Dr. Kevin

Susan arranged for there to be food in the rental house for the weekend's meals, and she had this beautiful cake made for us to celebrate with Abigail after the ceremony.

Another family pic!

Yesterday morning we had a delicious brunch at Sunny Side Cafe and Eatery. Seated between Suzanna and Abigail is the girls' friend Haley, whom they have known since childhood. Haley, Madison, and Elise are three Dickinson-area friends who spent the weekend in Miami with us for Abigail's commencement!

The Big Reveal: Abigail's Match Day!

For those unfamiliar with the medical school world, "Match Day" is a massive deal. On one designated day, at the same time all across the country, graduating medical students receive an email revealing where they have been matched for their post-med-school residency training. It's a high-stakes, binding system that determines where new doctors will spend the next several years of their careers--so our family wanted to make sure that Abigail had a full cheering section on Match Day today.

Abigail and Susan came to my office, where I had blocked out my calendar so we could wait together for the designated email time. The med school had sent T-shirts and announcement signs in advance to encourage Abigail to share the results on social media. However, the real highlight was the family surprises. Suzanna and her fiancé, Jacob, secretly flew in from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the night before so they could walk into my office just minutes before the reveal! Meanwhile, Hillary cleared her work schedule back in Murfreesboro to join the countdown via video call.

When the email arrived, Abigail was elated to learn that she has been placed at her top choice: Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia. She applied to and interviewed with dozens of children's hospitals throughout the winter and spring and even flew out to her top-ranked possibilities in February, and Norfolk became her favorite--so she ranked it #1 on her preference list and hoped that they had ranked her highly, too, based on her interviews. Apparently, she made a good impression on them!

We are so happy for Abigail and are glad we could share this milestone in her medical school journey. Of course, we went out for supper to celebrate; and we look forward to joining her at her med school commencement ceremony in May (stay tuned).

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Match Day ends the ultimate matching game: students rank the hospitals, hospitals rank the students, a computer algorithm sorts it out and delivers the result ... and Abigail has ended up exactly where she wanted to go!

Surrounded by love, surprises, and the best news ever. Congratulations, Dr. Abigail!

Getting Smarter

Susan and I just spent a week in Boston, Massachusetts, getting smarter together at a few professional conferences!

We both attended the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Susan chose sessions related to high school libraries, looking for new ideas for how she, as a library media specialist, can support other teachers in developing students' literacy. My own goal was to gather ideas for using artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools in college writing classes--specifically, teaching college students how to use A.I. effectively to support their learning, not to cheat their way out of learning (by having A.I. write their essays for them, for example).

Some of the convention highlights were the excellent keynote speakers (see below). Susan and I also had opportunities to explore the area near the convention center and enjoy restaurants including Seaport Social (seafood), Serafina (Italian), and Citrus and Salt (Mexican). We especially loved wandering through an outdoor Christmas market in the Seaport district (called "Snowport" for the winter holidays!).

Immediately following the NCTE conference, the convention center was used for two more conferences of NCTE-related groups--and Susan and I each attended a different one.

• She went to the annual ALAN Workshop (ALAN = Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE), which is all about adolescent literature. Attendees receive a box of about 40 works of recently published books and advance reader copies of upcoming releases. Their authors and more attend ALAN, too, and appear on panels and do book signings. There are also workshops ... and this year Susan presented in a poster session (see photo below)!
• I have attended the ALAN Workshop for several years but this year attended a different event that occurred concurrently: the annual convention of the Conference on English Leadership (CEL). I made connections with other English leaders and heard from keynote speakers, including Carol Jago, whose work I have been familiar with since my English education classes in my undergraduate days.

Susan and I both learned a lot at NCTE, ALAN, and CEL, and we have a lot of resources to share with our colleagues in the coming weeks and months. But for now, we are pooped. That was a long time to be gone--and to be engaged in learning all day and night for six consecutive days. We are ready for a little Thanksgiving break.

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NCTE's keynote speaker on Thursday, November 21, was Ketanji Brown Jackson, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. One of her topics was her recent memoir Lovely One. Despite her important position, she seemed so down-to-earth and shared anecdotes from her impressive journey to the Supreme Court.

The keynote speaker on Friday, November 22, was Kate McKinnon, an actor many people recognize from her years on Saturday Night Live or the recent movie Barbie. She has written a work of adolescent literature called The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science. She was hilarious but humble, saying that she was intimidated to be in the presence of so many people doing such important work: teaching. (There were over 8,000 attendees at the NCTE convention.)

A very Moberg thing is to bump into someone we know no matter where we are. When visiting the vendor booths in the exhibition hall, Susan saw our friend Olivia, who used to work with me in Dickinson and who now teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

The keynote speaker on Saturday, November 23, was Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the memoir Just Mercy. He was an excellent public speaker: polished and mesmerizing.

The keynote speaker on Sunday, November 24, was Ada Limón, United States Poet Laureate. She read from one new and one upcoming book of poetry (here). The already-released book is an illustrated version of her poem "In Praise of Mystery," which was engraved on the Europa Clipper spacecraft that was launched last month to Jupiter and its moons!

Here's a view of the quirky interior of Citrus and Salt. We had a great meal of several small plates that we shared ... and margaritas, of course (which we did not share).

One of the featured speakers at the ALAN Workshop was Randy Ribay, one of my favorite authors of adolescent literature. His recent book Everything We Never Had was an excellent read and has been raking in the awards lately.

Susan's poster session at the ALAN Workshop was on her work to help English teachers in her school to set up individual classroom libraries and to connect them to the school library (that she heads) for a collaborative effort to support high schoolers as readers.

Unexpected Vacation, Day 2

(Recall Day 1.)

I knew from yesterday that the Farmers Union Oil Co.'s automotive shop would open at 7:00 A.M. today, and I was up and ready by 6:30 so that I could be sure to be there when they opened.  Yesterday afternoon the van died while we were parked on the street by the Farmers Union, so that's where I walked this morning.  I tried to start the van to see if I'd be able to drive it into the shop at least, and to my surprise, it started and ran just fine.  I even took it for a drive out of town a ways and back, and it seemed perfectly normal.  Still, I didn't want to take any chances of our getting stranded again while driving home, and I asked the mechanics if they could look it over.

A Very Roloff Sunday

Faithful Reader, I told you yesterday that this morning would be an early one for me, and now I'll tell you why: the girls and I got up around 5:00 A.M. to head north and visit my relatives' graves, and decorate my mom's, for Memorial Day.  Each year my sisters and I take turns providing flowers for Mom's grave, and this year was my turn.  Susan stayed behind to attend the commencement ceremony this afternoon at the school where she teaches (and is a senior class advisor), so it was a trip for just the girls and me today.  In addition to visiting cemeteries, we also visited out-of-state relatives who are in Williston for a few days.  All the details--and photos, naturally--are here:

Indoor Picnic

Susan and her friend Leslie teach together and, since last year, have been in charge of organizing the end-of-year faculty picnic for their school.  Both last year and tonight, the event was held in the Recreation Center, which was great because, although one thinks of "outdoors" when one think of "picnic," one is delighted to be indoors when the weather is cold and rainy, as it was both last year and tonight.  They gather door prizes, decorate the tables, and prepare food and beverages.  This year's menu was fajitas and tacos, and Susan has spent the last several days making the meat.  The crockpot has been full of seasoned chicken breasts, which she has then shredded and replaced with a new batch; and both she and Suzanna have taken turns frying up batches of spicy ground beef.  Consequently, we have all smelled like a Mexican restaurant just from walking through our kitchen.  But the food tonight was delicious, and the company was fun (Susan is friends with smart and funny people from work).

Household of Smarties

The girls attend three different schools; but at each building, the school year ended with the distribution of awards.  Abigail's school gave out awards yesterday, and Suzanna and Hillary's schools did so today.  Each girl won the President's Award for Educational Excellence "in recognition of Outstanding Academic Excellence."  They're very good students, so we weren't surprised--but we are surely proud and want the girls to be proud of themselves.  Reading so much, studying, respecting teachers, putting forth effort in the classroom . . . they pay off in good grades and occasional recognitions such as this award.  (Daddy is hoping for another sort of payoff: full scholarships when it comes time to apply to universities.  Keep studying, girls!)

Substitute Accompanist

Today I had another first at church: first time accompanying the adult choir.  Michael, the senior choir's director, teaches at the high school with Susan and asked her a couple days ago whether she thought I'd be willing to do that (their usual accompanist was going to be unavailable today).  So she brought home the music, I practiced it a few times, and I met the choir about 45 minutes before church this morning to run through it with them.  I watched his conducting very carefully; and at one point, he chastised the choir for not slowing down at a particular measure marked ritardando: "The conductor and the accompanist are ritard-ing, but the choir is not."  So I must have been doing something right!  It seemed to go well when they sang it during the church service, too.  It reminded me of my teen days as a church organist and an accompanist for high school choir.  Ah, memories.

Finale Concert

"Why won't Abigail stop taking my picture?!"

Suzanna's final music concert as a seventh-grader was tonight.  She played in the seventh-grade band, and later the seventh- and eighth-grade bands combined to perform a few numbers from their marching band repertoire.  Those were Suzanna's favorite numbers, so I'll share them with you, too:

Daddy's Home!

Many thanks to Grandpa Gustafson for staying with the girls last night through this evening!  He got them to/from their piano recital last night, school this morning, and swimming practice after school.  In exchange, they made his meals and showered him with affection.  Fair trade.

I spent the day driving around northeast Minneapolis, MN with my colleague Dawn (remember?).  We visited with school administrators from an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school, all with highly diverse student populations (i.e., 80-90% of the students speak English as a second or third language and come from low-income families).  We would like to take our own teacher education students to these three schools for experience working with students in settings featuring urban diversity, something they don't get much of in Western ND!  The Minneapolis schools were receptive, so we will move ahead with this initiative in the coming months.

I came home tonight to find the sweetest thing awaiting me:

Parentless Pianists

Now, not only must the girls survive without Susan around (remember this and this?), but they must also do without me!  After Sunday school this morning, I left town with a colleague to drive to Bismarck, ND to fly from their airport to Minneapolis, MN for work-related appointments there tomorrow (more on that later).  That meant leaving the girls in the care of Susan's dad today through tomorrow evening.  The girls are pretty self-sufficient, taking care of meals for Grandpa and getting themselves ready for school tomorrow (and they did all the laundry and cleaned the house yesterday while I made Scandinavian Saturday supper).  But they can't drive (yet), and their piano recital was scheduled for tonight (while both Susan and I were gone).  So Grandpa took them!

They captured the performances on video, too.  Wanna see/hear?

Scandinavian Recipe Redux

Without Susan here this weekend (remember?), the girls had to spend the morning alone as I attended the university's commencement ceremony.  After the speeches had ended and the reading of the pages and pages and pages of graduates' names had begun, I zoned out a bit until I heard my own last name read aloud!  I looked up to see my cousin Joel's daughter Michaela walking across the stage.  Then I looked over toward her cheering section in the bleachers, and sure enough, there were my uncle and my cousins!  My cousin Myrna must have spotted me earlier because she had her eyes on me when I looked up and scanned the bleachers, and she grinned and waved!  What a fun surprise.  Michaela got her degree through our Bismarck campus, so I hadn't even recalled that she was a student of ours--therefore, it didn't occur to me that I would see relatives today (albeit only from afar).

And that wasn't the end of the day's activities . . .

A Weekend Without Susan

The girls and I are Susan-less for the weekend!  Yesterday she drove to Mandan to spend the night at her brother Jerrett's place so that she could get up early this morning and fly out of Bismarck to their sister Cassie's place in SC.  Cassie and her husband Nick recently had a second child (remember?), and Susan is there to meet the baby (Marly Sue) and spoil her and her brother Davis for a few days.  Wanna see Marly?

Bad-but-Good News for Abigail, Gift for Me

This afternoon featured two major events: one bad and one good.  First, the bad: Abigail had another incident that resulted in a trip to the emergency room.  Abigail was more "out of it" this time than last, necessitating assistance from the principal to help her out of the building and to drive her and Susan to the hospital, where I met them.  In the end, however, we may have received the insight we were hoping for from the ER doctor on duty; for details, read Susan's synopsis here.

Job Fair

Today I drove to Bismarck to join some of my students at an Education Networking Fair.  It was co-sponsored by several entities, including participation by faculty in the education programs of the University of Mary and Dickinson State University (we have a campus in Bismarck).  It was held at Bismarck State College on the top floor of the National Energy Center of Excellence building, an impressive structure with a south-facing view of the mighty Missouri River, of several bridges that connect Bismarck and Mandan, and of all the buttes and hills lying beyond the cities . . . I'm jealous of everyone with an office on that side of that building!

All the university students in attendance are just completing a semester of pre-service teaching (often referred to as "student-teaching") and are now looking for their first teaching jobs.  Principals, superintendents, and human resource directors from about a dozen area school districts were there to say a bit about their schools, to announce what job openings they have and anticipate having, and to sit and make themselves available to meet with any students interested in those jobs.  My students looked very professional and came with cover letters and résumés prepared to share.  They were also unsure and nervous, which brought me back to the same point in my life: getting ready to graduate and looking for my first teaching job.  It's exciting but nerve-racking.  I hope they all get good jobs soon!

Moberg Models

Last night Hillary went to a friend's house to spend the night, so she wasn't with us as we went to Spaghetti Western for supper.  We chose that place because the university student who gives Suzanna's private lessons on trombone was performing there as a lounge singer with a friend of his on the piano.  It was fun to hear them perform American standards and light jazz songs (and he even played muted trombone on a few of them).  We were all in a good end-of-the-week, delicious-food-and-fun-background-music kind of mood, so of course I had to take some photos:

Banding Together

Tonight was the public schools' All-City Band Concert, held in the main gym of the high school.  Here are details of how the annual event works.  Essentially, a couple songs are performed by each of the bands by grade: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-10, and 11-12.  The night ends with all the grades taking the floor to perform one or two pep band songs together.  (This year the high school jazz band performed a few more songs after that.)  With a 6th-grader and a 7th-grader in  our family, we had to attend to hear how Abigail and Suzanna's bands sounded.  Here is photographic evidence:

Our Songbirds

Yesterday morning our family walked up the street to Trinity High School so that Abigail and Suzanna could perform in the 2011 Trinity Junior High and Elementary Solo and Ensemble Music Festival.  Suzanna first performed in the festival two years ago (remember?); and when Abigail was old enough last year, she joined her (remember?).  Hillary is still one year away from being old enough (one must be at least in fifth grade), so it was just Abigail and Suzanna again this year.  And, again, we have audiovisual evidence of their participation!  Wanna hear?

Backfire

Today was my first time attending a conference in Bismarck for pre-service teachers (what many universities call "student-teachers"), cooperating teachers (the K-12 teachers who host pre-service teachers in their classrooms to learn how to teach with them there as mentors), and the university supervisors and professors who train future teachers.  It was held at the University of Mary and consisted of informational sessions in the morning and afternoon and a lunch and awards ceremony at noon.  That awards ceremony was supposed to be an opportunity for me to surprise someone . . . but it turns out that I was the one who received a surprise!

Pie and Cake in the Same Meal

Hillary was my helper for this week's Scandinavian Saturday supper.  The recipes came from the InterWebs (the pie), from Food Network Magazine (the fish and carrots), and from a colleague of mine (the dessert)--various sources but, surprisingly, a unified meal with very tasty elements.

You know you want to know more about the meal, so read on!  (And remember to click on any photo to enlarge it for maximum drooling.)