I've decided medical school applications are a lot like what I imagine therapy to be - ridiculously expensive and painfully introspective. There's no hiding from your shortcomings or weaknesses when AMCAS summarizes it for you on an eight by eleven digital print-out of the last four years of your life. Also, the insignificance of your life-until-this-point is really put under the spotlight with the, "Please describe, in 5000 characters or less, your life story. Everything. And if it's not too much to ask, try to make it interesting because we have about 48,000 applicants that are cooler than you." Thanks for not beating around the bush, AMCAS. On the other hand, it's kind of interesting to see a timeline of your activities, and realize how collectively this has all brought you to where you are today, which in my case happens to be blogging in front of one very dirty laptop in our two-window, one-bedroom apartment, in a city whose water tastes questionable (am I the only one who thinks this?). Yea, I would probably change some things if I could go back four years ago and tell my naive, annoyingly friendly (still guilty), crybaby self to suck it up and stay on track. But, for the most part I think my experiences, especially the failures, have made me into who I am today - which is obviously, perfect, if you haven't noticed.
On another note, my bad luck is back in full swing. This week, my car had a mid-life crisis. One flat tire on the weekend, followed by a broken thermostat, sticking brake, broken brake light, cracked windshield, and non-functioning air conditioning (which was extra special with the record breaking temperatures at the beginning of the week). After taking care of the essentials, new left front tire, thermostat in place, brake fixed, draining bank account, adding freon and air diagnosed... Wednesday rolls around to greet me on my way to class, at 7:30am, with a completely flat right front tire. So what do I do? Change it out for the spare tire which also happens to be, completely flat. Excellent. AAA came to my rescue, changed the spare out with the original flat tire, filled it with enough air so I could drive to discount tire (aka my new hangout), where the guy informs me - yea, that's a really old tire. Really wish I had been in there earlier that week to find that out and prevent this whole situation.. oh wait, that's right... I was just in here two days ago. Long story shorter, tire(s) fixed, major crises avoided... same day, a piece of metal coating on my door handle decides to come off and slice my finger open. I'm getting a bike.
I'm hoping this means that last Thursday, when I took my test, that I just used up all my luck quota, and that this was compensation...
photo by eGFI
