Preparing for what's next

I've talked to a bunch of friends, family, and coworkers about my waitlist status and I love how they are so unanimously optimistic about my chances of still getting in, because I sure am not. They're all empty hopes that have no foundation so I smile, nod, and thank them for their confidence in me. And I agree with them when they say, "At least you weren't rejected." Gotta love blind optimism!

The best advice I've been given thus far has been to prepare to reapply and plan my life accordingly. I need to stop putting off making summer plans in the hopes of getting accepted this year, and instead I should live my life the way I would have if I'd been rejected outright. On the off chance that I do end up accepted then I'll rearrange my plans accordingly, but for now I need to live life. And so I have.

It helps that I just got back from an incredibly relaxing 2-week vacation and the things causing stress in my life (not medical school related) have been resolved for the most part. I notice myself repeating "Such is life" and "It is what it is" a lot these days so I think I've simply ceased to care about the minutiae and have accepted everything for what it is.

I've become optimistic and happy regarding my current situation and my future in general, and I'm much more excited about the prospect of medical school, even if I have to wait another cycle for it. When I applied last year I was so burned out from life that the thought of dealing with applications and selling myself at interviews was too much to handle. I'm pretty sure that sentiment was conveyed through my essays and answers to interviewers, which didn't help my cause. But now I'm much more relaxed and ready for the beast that is the process of applying to medical school.

With the approach of May, I need to start requesting transcripts and sending out drafts of my personal statement to get edited so that I'm ready to submit my AMCAS application on June 4th (the first possible day for submission). There are a few activities I need to update but overall, there's really not much I need to do the second time around.

I have a very good idea of what has brought me to this point in my life and the motivations behind my decisions in the past. Going through this process once already has prepared me for the types of questions and answers I should expect, and the best way to convey my interest and passions in writing and in person.

Honestly, I'm not dreading going through this cycle a second time, which is the opposite sentiment of most reapplicants. Most people say they would never wish another medical school application cycle on anyone. As an older applicant, I have some perspective on what really matters in life and in the grand scheme of things, reapplying isn't very high on my "awful shit I have to go through" list. Yeah, it sucks and given the choice I would've preferred to get in the first time around (duh), but it's not the end of the world and I'll come out of it a better person.

At least that's what I'm saying now. We'll see how my tune changes a year from now if I still haven't gotten in by the second go around.

Waitlisted...again

Well, this sucks.

Second interview recap

I realized I never wrote up a recap of my second interview, so here it goes. It's a beast and took me a few days to write because there was just so much to say. So bear with me. It was an eventful day.

One week

I will know my fate at the dream school for sure in one week. I may hear back sooner, but definitely not later and I'm half relieved and half scared.

There are two ways to think about the fact that they're still sitting on my application:

1. They like me enough that they just can't bring themselves to reject me outright.
2. They can't find a good enough reason to accept me to their incoming class.

Neither of these reasons is all that reassuring but at least I haven't been rejected yet.

Mostly, I have a feeling I'm going to end up on the waitlist, with a slightly smaller possibility of a rejection and an even smaller chance of an acceptance. At least that's how I'm setting myself up for the next week so I won't be too crushed when the inevitable happens.

In a last-ditch effort to swing the admissions committee in the direction of accepting me, I've sent them a love letter/update mix. It's neither one nor the other, but rather a combination of a letter of interest and an update since I don't have enough new things going on in my life to send the update as a stand-alone but I wanted to say something before my fate is sealed.

I think it may be too little too late but it makes me feel like I've done everything in my power to get an acceptance. I'll let you know how it goes.

Limbo is not conducive to life planning

I still don't know if I'll be attending medical school in the fall or if I will be reapplying and thus will have another year of relative freedom/little structure. While I've become accustomed to the waiting aspect of the application cycle, I'm still adjusting to having to hold off on making any concrete plans past mid-July.

I've always been a planner so the huge question mark where my future should be is mildly irritating. There are a few things coming up in late August through mid-September that I would really like to do. So although I know I'll be in the area for sure because I'll either be attending the local medical school or staying put to reapply, I have no idea if I'll have the time to do them due to a little time-sucking thing known as anatomy. And I can't imagine I'll be able to go out of town for a whole weekend in the midst of that block.

Mostly, I like to pay early bird prices for things and although it's not the end of the world that I have to wait a few months to figure out what I'll be doing in September, the added cost of indecision hurts my soul.

But more seriously, I can't give my boss concrete dates for when I'll be available for the deployment to Alaska this summer, which messes with his trip-planning and budgeting as well. I'm also going to visit my family across the pond in June/July/August (I'm foreign) so making any sort of camping plans with them and finding time between the deployment and a wedding to go over there is nearly impossible right now. Since they have kids and jobs and other vacation plans that don't include me, it'd be nice to give them some advance warning regarding my arrival.

Yes, these are all frivolous and trivial concerns compared to the big unknown regarding my future, but I've been trying to stop thinking about that and instead focus on the things that make me happy, which usually require planning and thus the problem of limbo.

I also have nothing to report medicine-wise since not much is happening in that department, so you get these kinds of posts instead.

Exciting non-medical school news

The dream school is still stringing me along like a bad relationship so I have no news on that front. I've been avoiding the school-specific thread on SDN until I hear back from them, which should be any day now, because reading other people's results just stresses me out and gives me no information on my particular application. And I don't really need any more stress in my life.

Instead of thinking about medical school admissions, I've been getting on with my life. I have a ridiculous amount of things planned between now and July and I'm getting pretty excited about what the next few months have to offer. I've become more serious about refereeing (my first big match is tomorrow...I'm terrified) and I've started to take care of myself by learning new recipes and getting outside more often.

But most excitingly, the group with which I work is planning a deployment to northern Alaska this summer and my boss recently asked me if I'd like to go because they could really use my help on-site. Prior to getting this invitation, I had planned on quitting my job before this expedition and enjoying the summer on my own terms if I was matriculating in the fall, or providing remote support from our home office if I had to reapply and keep the job for another year.

Obviously the first option was more appealing on so many levels, but the opportunity to go on this trip throws a very interesting wrench in the plans. A deployment to Alaska is not something I can just pass up, so regardless of my medical school situation it looks like I'll be spending at least part of the summer in a hangar above the Arctic Circle.

The only pseudo-problem with this trip is that the dates could overlap with my hypothetical medical school orientation and I would only be able to make it for two weeks or so before having to get back to the real world. But everything is still up in the air so there's no reason to worry about things I can't control. For all I know, the dates could work out in my favor and I will have stressed for nothing. Or I could not go at all.

So, as with most things lately, I'm cautiously optimistic about this deployment. But if I don't get into medical school this cycle, there is a very fun silver lining to spending another year reapplying. So there's that.

Waitlisted...a good thing?

I got a letter today (snail mail style) saying I've been put on the waitlist at the second school at which I interviewed. You would think I'd be pretty bummed about this, but it's actually a good thing.

What I haven't put on this blog is that I really didn't like the school when I visited it. I hated it so much that I'd been seriously considering withdrawing from it prior to receiving a decision, but the thought that this school might be my only chance at an MD has kept me from sending that email to the admissions office.

I've been heavily weighing my options for the past few days thinking I had one more week to make the choice between withdrawing or not because a friend of mine who interviewed a week before me received their decision yesterday. But it looks like they lumped all of the December interviewees into one committee session so the decision has been made for me, which is a relief in a way.

Now I just wait on the dream school, although with the way this cycle is going for me, it's not looking good. At least I've been primed for disappointment.

Dwindling chances

Another batch of people just got accepted to my dream school, with most of them having interviewed early in the cycle like I did (October/November) so I guess they're still sitting on a lot of applications. Prior to this group of acceptances, the school had only given out ~1/3 of the spots it would offer this cycle. I'm not sure how many were offered this past week but it seems like there's still a large chunk of people that will be accepted. At least that's the expectation. And hearing that people who interviewed early are still being reviewed and accepted gives me some hope, albeit very little of it.

I'm in this weird head space right now where I'm convinced that I will have to reapply next cycle but at the same time I can't believe that I won't get in. It's like one part of me is rooted in the reality of the situation but there's still the dreamer that's holding out hope.

Also, I've been feeling very down lately because I recently realized that nothing good has happened to me in well over a year. This is not to say that my life has been crappy, because it hasn't been like that for the most part. It's just that all the things I'd planned for myself as a reward/pleasure have backfired mightily and none of the things that have occurred spontaneously in my life have been good. So overall I'm situated at the negative end of the spectrum of happiness and it kind of sucks.

With this recent realization regarding my state of being, it's very hard to comprehend that good news will come to my door (or inbox) with regards to medical school admissions. If I do get accepted to the dream school, it'll be a very pleasant surprise because I'm setting myself up for epic failure.

If you set your expectations low, you'll never be disappointed. Or so they say.

Right now, life is good

I tend to write when I'm feeling extreme emotions and the bad has outweighed the good lately, which has been reflected in the tone of the blog. So with all these doom and gloom posts dominating for the past month or so, I figured one positive post was in order.

For a good 90% of the day, my life is pretty awesome*. I still work only part-time (at my request) so I have plenty of hours in the day to relax, read, and hang out. When I do work, I make a significant contribution to my team's current project and I can see the progress directly.

I've begun playing the guitar, learned to ride a unicycle, took a rugby refereeing course, and am currently participating in four sports leagues. I'm going home to visit my parents for ten days in February, after having spent over two weeks with them during the holidays. I can work remotely so I don't even use vacation days for this.

I also wasn't lying to my dream school interviewer when I said that volunteering at the hospital is the highlight of my week. With the extra time on my hands, I am able to pull longer shifts and come in more often, which makes me very happy. My charge nurse gives me a great deal of responsibility and the work I do is necessary, so I look forward to it every week and absolutely love my time there.

And although I don't do any real medicine at the moment, I can see myself in the physicians I "work" with and I am SO excited to be there one day. It's days like last Thursday that make me realize that I have made the absolutely correct decision to return to medicine and I am so incredibly thrilled to some day serve my patients in a more medical capacity.

All in all, I'm taking full advantage of the ridiculous amount of free time at my disposal because I know it won't be like this for much longer.

Like I said in the title, life is good right now.

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*The other 10% of my day is consumed by stress, whether it's dreaming about being rejected from my dream school, anxiously checking my email when I wake up in the morning, or wracking my brain about how I could've interviewed better as I'm trying to fall asleep at night. Once I'm fully awake and in control of my emotions, I'm good and carefree. But as soon as I let my mind wander, all hell breaks loose up there.

Rejection scare

I have very realistic dreams to the point where I often have to ask other people if we've had certain conversations that I'm convinced occurred but my friends don't remember. Sometimes this works to my advantage in that I can practice an important speech or event while I'm sleeping and all parties involved react like they normally would, which gives me instant feedback on how I should interact in a given situation.

But sometimes things don't go my way and I wake up with a terrible feeling of dread, which is no way to start a day. Unfortunately, this happened early last week.

I very vividly dreamt that my dream school sent me a rejection email. Since I knew that this school sends out only acceptances and no other decisions until about March, I figured that I was dreaming and my mind was playing evil tricks on me. So I "woke myself up" from this nightmare only to "discover" that the email was still in my inbox. After a bit of "sitting on my bed with my head in my hands", I woke myself up for real and a sense of dread washed over me, which was eventually followed by relief upon realizing that this had simply been a terrible dream.

The whole thing was so realistic that it was scary. The process of checking my email and the program I use were identical to how this really unfolds on any given morning, and I felt all the feelings that I imagine I would feel if I were to get rejected (it could still happen, and if it does, I'll let you know if I'm correct in my prediction).

What got to me the most was one line towards the end of this fictitious letter that said, "Although we cannot offer you a spot in our class, you are a fantastic candidate and I am confident you will be accepted to one of your other top choices." (I had met with the admissions officer one-on-one earlier in my dream as a sort of favor and last-ditch effort by my pre-advisor who knew the adcom well, hence the personal nature of the rejection.)

I've heard similar words before. My pre-med committee called me "the ideal career changer" in my letter of recommendation and told me in no uncertain terms that they'd be shocked if I didn't get in this cycle. So it's not just in my head that I am a qualified applicant for medical school.

If I were to get rejected by my dream school, then there is no other school willing to take me at this point, contrary to what my fake adcom predicted. That's devastating, both in my dream world and in real life. And devastation was the feeling that was so painful when I first woke up...until I realized it had all been a horrible mind trick.

All in all, I know that there is no guarantee of getting accepted anywhere and I honestly didn't think I'd do too well this application cycle because of my poor grades in undergrad. But I expected more than the two paltry interviews I've received thus far, and most disconcertingly, no decisions this late in the cycle with no prospects of any other interviews coming my way. So although some might think I'm good (or at least good enough), clearly the people that matter don't think the same way. And that's discouraging but also incredibly humbling.

What's most infuriating about all this is that as much as I try to forget the fact that I'm applying to medical schools right now because it completely stresses me out, my subconscious just won't let it go.

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ETA: Ever since this initial dream, I've been having adcom dreams nearly every night. These are the first dreams I've had about medical school this entire cycle and I think it's because the deadline to worry, per my pre-med advisor, is quickly approaching. I'm fine at managing my stress level during the day, but apparently at night my will-power all but disappears.