<p>Till about a year ago I had never heard of the term "White Coat Ceremony", and I still am quite uninformed about the tradition, meaning, and importance. This weekend we drove DD1 to med school and helped move and set up her stuff. I found out that her WCC is three weeks from now, and I want to give it a pass given that I'll have a 7+ hour drive each way that I don't particularly look forward to, especially since we have a similar drive the following weekend to drop DD2 off to college. DW can't believe I'm talking about missing such an event. </p>
<p>What did the rest of you do - if you had a long drive, did you still go?</p>
<p>Here’s my thought about attending family events that I might rather skip because it would be inconvenient: I’d MUCH rather go to the weddings and the graduations and the birthday parties than the funerals!</p>
<p>Your kiddo has worked her tail off for years to get to this point, and it really is a cool moment for all of you to celebrate her accomplishment and her future. I’m sure she would like for you to be there to share it with her. Sure the 14h car ride sucks, but hopefully the pride and joy of seeing YOUR kid take her first real steps into being a physician will be worth it! Bet you can even talk her into posing for a pic with you :)</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter what any of us thinks about the event but rather the importance your daughter places on it. To me, personally, I don’t think it’s that important and I definitely wouldn’t ask my parents to drive 14 hours to attend a 2 hour event. But, obviously, your daughter thinks differently. In my opinion, there’s really only two important days in med school. #1 being Match Day and #2 being graduation.</p>
<p>We are not big on ceremonies and hallmark holidays, but I could tell my DD hoped we would choose to come. We changed plans to be there. I am glad we did, we took the time to go out to eat & just with her and enjoy the time. Med school is a busy time, I have had times when I offered to take her to lunch (currently 2+ hours from me) and she declined due to her schedule, so rather than look at the logic of attending, I look at the opportunity.</p>
<p>Yeah, we did not want to make the drive (7 hours) either, but we were glad we did. Everybody seemed to have someone, like all the other grade school & high school ceremonies, it is just something you do.</p>
<p>That being said, missing it is not tragic, the ceremony is an opportunity to share the journey.</p>
<p>If you want, you go, if you do not or there are significant reasons for missing, then you do not. Your kids with stick with buddies. We attended, only 2 hrs of drive for us. We were surprized by the number of attended as very many are from California, definitely flying. The venu was packed. The whole event was so awesome at the very fancy place with very very fancy food. I made sure to check every marbled bathroom. It was rclose to D’s UG graduation ceremony, it overshadowed it by far.</p>
<p>Just made reservations for my D’s, which isn’t for 2 months. I will be flying up and then driving 2 1/2 hours, and my mom will be flying in from the west coast. From what we hear, most students have family and/or friends attending.</p>
<p>In hindsight, the day that I wish that I’d told my mom to skip was White Coat Ceremony and the day that I wish I’d asked my mom to be at was match day. Instead, it ended up happening the other way around.</p>
<p>My white coat ceremony felt like a huge deal at the time, though.</p>