I've been really worried about the prospect of reapplying because I really don't want to wait another year to get started on my dream. I've already put it off long enough and I'm kind of over waiting for my life to begin.
But much like one eventually goes through the five stages of grief after a tragic event*, on my Things-Out-Of-My-Control Scale I have made it through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression to eventually arrive at not-giving-a-sh!t, or as others would call it, acceptance. (My way of dealing with stress directly mirrors the typical stages of grief and ever since I've figured this out, it's made managing my stress so much more...manageable.)
I've only received two interviews. The first one didn't go very well in my opinion and the second school has a very low out-of-state acceptance rate, even post-interview. So it's not looking good for me this cycle.
Before the holidays I paid a visit to my pre-med advisor (the one who's the most positive of the three because I needed a pick-me-up) to discuss my options for the coming year and how I should improve my application if I do have to reapply.
She boosted my ego by saying I have the "ideal career changer application" and thus there aren't any gaping holes to fix, and that my late secondary submissions are most likely to blame for my lack of interview invitations. She also said that there's a surge of interview invites in December and January so I shouldn't start worrying until February about hearing crickets from medical schools.
In addition, if I do end up reapplying, I learned that I don't have to completely revamp my application because schools understand that a good applicant can be rejected simply due to submitting secondaries late in the game, and such rejections do not necessarily indicate a red flag in the application. So overall, my themes and ideas can remain the same, but I just need to edit my essays a little more and add some things to my existing activity descriptions that I've done in the past year.
As such, reapplying is not as daunting of a task as I thought it would be with regards to essay-writing so that definitely helps my psyche. This also doesn't make it seem nearly as bad as I believed it would be when the thought first crossed my mind.
The one thing I am concerned about, though, is my dream school because I wasn't late in submitting my primary or secondary application there by any means. Thus I believe that the only reason I wouldn't get in would be because I bombed the interview. So maybe I should change up my application to make it stronger for them. Or I should simply pick a different topic for my secondary answer if/when I get a second chance. Or kicking butt on the interview the second time around if I do get such an opportunity would be enough to tip the scales in my favor.
I don't know at this point. I'm speculating too much on matters I have no idea about or control over and I should just stop for my own sanity.
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*I don't know why I've mentioned death/sad stuff so much in the past couple of posts. It's probably because I've spent too much time with my parents. Every time they ask me if I knew someone, it's a safe bet that the next thing out of their mouths will be, "They have cancer." Or, "They died." Just last week I found out that my dad's coworker was killed in a motorcycle accident. Morbid conversations run in the family.
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