Envelope Please . . .

For a brief moment on Wednesday morning, Allison Murphy, 28, held her future in her hand. Shaking, she then ripped open the envelope, took a look and shouted, “I got it!”

Under clear blue skies and surrounded by blue and yellow balloons, 97 graduates of UC Irvine College of Medicine laughed, cried and sprayed champagne as they received news of where they will spend their residencies.

In the annual nerve-racking ceremony called Match Day, students tore into envelopes that revealed their paths for the next three to seven years. For more than 14,000 medical students nationwide, the annual event has evolved into a rite of spring.

At UC Irvine, students said the celebration was a payoff for the four stress-filled, sleep-deprived years they endured while plowing through medical school.

Most of them, who waited with family members and friends on the patio of Irvine Hall while listening for their names to be called, got their first choices. Murphy, from Bethesda, Md., is heading to Stanford. Students hollered their picks as they ripped open envelopes: “Northwestern!” “Cedars-Sinai!” “UC Irvine!”

Thomas Cesario, dean of the medical college, congratulated the students on “completing four difficult years.”

Stan Patterson, 27, of Long Beach was happy with his match--Ventura County Medical Center.

“My hand was shaking when I opened the envelope, and then, I just thought to myself, ‘Yes!’ ” he said. “There have been a lot of ups and downs these last four years. I was scared about that envelope. A lot of things are hanging on what’s in that envelope.”

Murphy, who screamed for joy, immediately called her parents on her cellular phone. “My mom is screaming too,” she said. “I can’t believe it. My legs are still shaking. My specialty is going to be pediatrics, so Stanford was definitely my first choice. I was nervous but really excited about today.”

Roshanak Monzavi, 26, from Iran and president of the fourth-year medical school class, said the day was “exciting, but a bit sad. Only because it’s the end of one part of our lives and the beginning of another.”

Monzavi, who was matched with UC Irvine--her first choice--plans to specialize in pediatrics. “I feel that working in pediatrics will give me a certain kind of joy,” she said. “I think I will wake up every morning excited about going to work.”

Sixty-one of the students in UC Irvine’s graduating medical school class have chosen to train in a primary-care specialty, which includes family medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and internal medicine, school officials said.

The students’ new lives, with all their new responsibilities, will start all too soon, but on this day, their concentration was focused on one thing: celebrating.

Murphy, after popping the cork on a bottle of champagne and passing it to another student, said they deserved a party. “But as soon as it ends, I have some plans,” she said. “The first thing I want to do is take a long nap. It’s been a rewarding four years, but a very tiring four years.”

Amid all the hoopla, some students said they still couldn’t believe they had come so far.

“When I think about myself and my group of friends, I just can’t believe that we’re all going to be doctors,” Nigel Gupta, 25, said. “Man, it just blows me away.”