Wringing my hands like lady macbeth....contacted schools.....one saying hopefully by the end of this week....hopefully?.....hopefully? The other......"unfortunately it can take up to ten weeks for you to hear from us. We are working very hard to shorten that amount of time so that you will hopefully hear from us soon. Hang in there." (it will be seven weeks tomorrow). Financial aid stuff for DO school due tomorrow.....

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I am losing it....losing it fast.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"like that time I saw "The Sixth Sense" and made a vow to not tell anyone about the plot twist at the end where you find out that Haley Joel Osmet is Kaiser Sousa."

Lets just go ahead and make things worse by informing all those present that an individual who interviewed the same day that I did at one of the schools received his/her acceptance email this morning. Found out via one of those ridiculous boards that I visit with dwindling regularity.

*Note to self*- stop going to those boards

I am now REALLY freaking the f out.


all best,

MVH

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Oh crap....oh crap.....oh crap.....oh crap......oh crap.....oh crap.....

I have not been sleeping well as of late. I cannot shake this feeling of anxiety in the ever present waiting for the decisions that will befall me in the next two weeks. It is starting to take it's toll on me psychologically and physically. I now walk through the streets with butterflies in my stomach. I am dizzy and unable to concentrate on anything else. I wake up in the middle of the night and am unable to fall back asleep as my mind begins to mull over all of the "what ifs". I can feel my heart start to race and I can no longer lie still in bed or sit still at any of the desks that I occupy. In class I am physically present, but my mind will quickly begin a decent into a vertiginous abyss of the unknown. I am, for lack of a better phrase, "freaking the fuck out" about all of this. I start to feel guilty for not having done better in the past. I become jealous of my friends that have already been accepted. I start to wonder if I could have done things differently. If I should have said more or less in my interviews. Am I good enough for this journey. Will I be able to handle the ridiculous amount of stress that comes with having the lives of people in my hands. How many mistakes have I made and what mistakes will I undoubtedly make in the future. And of course the ever present questions like "Where the hell are my wife and I going to live dammit????" and "how the hell am I going to pay for all of this."
In this process, I can thankfully say that I do have a backup in place if these two other schools do not work out and for that I am forever grateful that, regardless of what occurs in the coming weeks, that I, no matter what, will be able to receive a doctorate and practice medicine.
For those of you counting, that is 23 MD schools applied to, 20 pre-interview rejections, 1 pre-interview hold, and 2 post interview decisions to be handed down.

In other news I have a biochemistry exam tomorrow that I will hopefully do well on. I did manage to get in some studying despite being out of town and will have tonight and most of the day tomorrow to make sure that I know my stuff.

I have been keeping my fingers crossed and hope alive for a multitude of things over the last several months of this year. The least of which seems to be my own future and being accepted to an MD school. The most important you ask? A story that is not meant for this journal, one that should be told in person and involves someone who has become irreversibly attached to my heart. That someone is at the top of my list and stands now as one of the more important assets in my life and has inadvertently become the ultimate reason for this journey that I have embarked upon.

When we next meet I will perhaps have some answers and will hopefully be able to look back at this post and laugh about how silly I was for thinking these things, but what I am really looking forward to is a good nights sleep.

With fingers perpetually crossed,

MVH

You feel old when...

......only 9 out of 25 guys on the active roster of your favorite baseball team are just a bit older than you, and those 9 players are considered to be "veterans"

.... a professor in your class mentions Oliver North and your classmates say "who??"

....you quote a well known film from the 80's to someone and you get a blank stare in return.

....you mention your father's LP collection to someone and you get a blank stare in return.

....you mention that you remember when Michael Jackson was black to someone and that someone says "Michael Jackson was black?"

just call me grandpa already....soon I'll start complaining about how back in my day yadda yadda yadda..

and just for the record still no word.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Is this like the best day of your lives?"
"Turk...It finally happened....DOUBLE PRIZES"
"You guys know your doctors right?"

Well what can I tell you that would excite you today. Probably not a whole lot on the personal level. I am still waiting.....trying to be patient...etc.

The head of the world bank is in trouble. Wow...misdeeds at a major corporate institution....It never would have crossed my mind. Nepotism in exchange for certain physical favors...I just didn't think people did stuff like that. But they were in a "relationship". Did anyone see the office last week? This all sounds like one of those art imitating life imitating art things.

Missing government emails.....you must be joking....stuff like that never happens!

Progress in Iraq?.....to paraphrase Jon Stewart "Oh...I see what the problem is, we've been looking at time as though it were moving forward. Linear time is so pre 9/11"

Grandmother is having a maze procedure today, also known as a catheter ablation, which will presumably take care of her irregular heartbeat. My thoughts are with you.

Friend of mine got into med school last week, to the very place that is my first choice, granted since there is only the possibility of my getting into two allopathic schools, the first choice or second choice seems somewhat moot. Anyway, I am so very excited for him. The news however has thrown me into quite a panic about my own situation and my mood has been rather poor of late. For those of you counting...it has been 8 weeks since one interview and 4 weeks since the other. My friend heard from this school in the 7th week after his interview, so perhaps there is some hope in my hearing sooner. Regardless, I am trying to remain as positive as I can be with an osteopathic route in my belt. I have also attempted to keep in my mind that I may end up with having to choose schools. Oh to be that lucky.

School is what it is at this point. My classes are going reasonably well. Our Biochem teacher is currently working on getting her tenure and as such we have had and will continue to have a variety of substitutes. This should make the next exam rather interesting. Lab is fine and interesting although I am not looking forward to class on Monday, wherein we will receive back our exam which I completely bombed. I am hoping that I at least passed with a 60, but that may be asking too much. My other two classes, a black politics class and African civilizations class are really damn interesting. It is nice to use the other half of my brain for awhile. Scored the highest grade in the class on my b-politics exam and recently breezed through an exam the other day in my civilizations class. Give me a map of Africa and I can place all the countries in the proper places.....I feel like I am in grade school again. No....that is too cocky and certainly disrespectful of my professors who are both really knowledgeable individuals. One is a Vietnam vet who has been teaching since 1978. I think I have learned more about this country in that class then I have in most of the other history/political sciences courses that I have taken. For the other class, I really did not know much of anything about Africa other than some bits and pieces about pre-history, Egyptology and the like, so it has been a great learning experience so far.

I will be graduating college with a BA in biochem on 5/31/07, and it will only have taken 15 years. It feels weird, but I think I really need that piece of paper in order to validate myself, not to anyone else, but for myself and my own ego as it were.

Ok so back to work....

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"My mother had a uterus...I used to live there."