The Hardest Part

To my dedicated fans, I apologize for not being very on the ball about this whole blogging business. I promised one special fan in particular a blog update about a month ago, and it has yet to happen. I hope you can forgive me and not hold my shortcomings against me. It now seems too long to blog about my most recent trip to California, but I will include a few things. The trip was wonderful, one of the best yet. A long distance relationship can be a drag at times, with the distance and the not seeing each other for weeks, but it makes the time we do get to see each other that much better. The highlight of my trip was probably Disneyland. We had a pristine day. We went on Friday in hopes that we would avoid some lines because kids would be in school, and we were right. The lines were short all day; I think the longest we waited was 15 or 20 minutes. The weather was perfect, the rides were perfect, the food was perfect, and the company was perfect. It really could not have been a better day. The next day was pretty great too. We went out to Huntington Beach and enjoyed the sun. The water was a bit chilly, so we stayed on the sand. I also got to see my friend Bertram for a bit, and we ended the day with some shopping at South Coast Plaza, the craziest mall I have ever to, and a delicious dinner at Maggianos. All in all, it was the perfect vacation.

Since vacation it has been work, work, work. Being an adult really isn’t all its cracked up to be, with the working and financial responsibility and planning and what not. I miss my days of being a care-free student, when it seemed like the good times would never end. For any students reading this blog, be warned, the good times end, and they end quickly. That is why I am trying to get back into being a student. I am in the thick of applying for medical school. The application process is tedious. First you have to do a bunch of stuff, like get good grades and take the MCAT and have a lot of activities/community service/research/other stuff no one cares about to make yourself look good. Then you have to fill out a primary application where you sum up your entire life and motivation for becoming a doctor into about five pages. Then you send that off to all the schools you could picture yourself at; for me it was 18 schools. Then you wait until they send you back a secondary application. But every school is different; some send everyone a secondary application, and some screen applicants based on their primary application. For me, 10 out of 18 schools sent me back a secondary automatically. The best part about the secondary is it is really just a ploy for the medical schools to make money. You figure each school gets a couple thousand primary applications, then they charge about $100 for secondary applications, that’s a couple hundred thousand dollars they are making. I guess they have to pay those people who sort through the applications somehow. Anyway, after you send off your secondary application the school takes a look at the 10 pages that sum up your life plus your recommendations, and then decide do you have what it takes to survive medical school. If they think you might have a shot, they want to sit you down and have a face to face conversation with you. This is called an interview, the pinnacle of the application process. Every applicant says things like “if I could just get a couple interviews, then I will be happy.” That is a lie. What every applicant means is “if I get an interview, there is no way they can turn me down.” But that isn’t true either. I know people who have been interviewed and then turned down. I can’t imagine a more depressing scenario. Anyway, I am in the thick of the secondary application phase. I just submitted my first secondary yesterday to my top choice, Loma Linda. Attending Loma Linda, while costing a lot of money, would solve so many potential problems that medical school presents to someone in my situation, the long distance relationship thing we discussed earlier. So I am hoping and praying the people at Loma Linda like what they read and want to give me an interview, because then there will be no way they can turn me down.

Other than applying and working I am just looking forward to the times I will see Katie in the coming weeks. I will be reunited with her on Thursday. We have a little NorCal adventure planned with a day in SF and a wedding in Napa. It should be great, check back for a post on that trip. Now I should get back to work. I hope you all are doing well (the four of you who read my blog: Katie, Mrs. Miller. Lesley, and I am going to venture and say Sarah checks occasionally).