Work/Activities Section

Listing all my jobs/extracurriculars now, and explaining in too few words what I did and what I learned. Let's see, I learned how to fold sweaters and men's woven shirts. I learned that you can't iron non-iron shirts because it ruins the non-iron-yness, and I learned that dry cleaning is expensive after a while.

Speaking of which, I have all these professional clothes that "I'll invest in!" and I never wear them. I also was never informed that the other office slaves have to wear scrubs to work. All this time, I've been wearing jeans and a graphic t-shirts. I should invest in scrubs though. 'Cuz then I can just wear that one set ALL WEEK before I wash it. Yeah! Maybe if I get enough stains on them, people will give me more standing room on the bus ride home.

I suppose this is the homestretch of Phase 1 of the application process, the Primaries. After seven months of gentle harassment, my last letter writer finally submitted her letter of recommendation to confirm that while I sucked at organic chem, I kicked butt in her class. I am still expecting another letter but I consider it a "bonus,"  as in her particular letter isn't required by schools, so if I do not receive it at all, I won't panic. I asked all my letter writers well in advance. Maybe about nine months in advance, but I didn't actually meet with my old professors in person until late-October, after my sling was off and I could control my arm enough to drive.

My work/activities section is harder than I thought. Not all of these activities had a huge effect on me. The great thing about going to a big university is that there were a lot of volunteer opportunities at the nearby medical school. The downside is, no one gives a crap about you. It's not that I expect people to go out of their way for me or any other pre-med, and the "meaningful experiences" I get are things that I pursued with my own effort, not because someone treated me nice as a student. But there's no way around the fact that sorting hundreds and hundreds of transcription records sucks. I remember reading a few that were interesting, but I suspect that I dozed off at some point because there's a fuzzy part in my memory.

The new thing (added last year?) was the new "Most Meaningful Activity" section. We get an addition 1300-ish characters to explain why a specific activity (a maximum of 3 activities) was the most meaningful. I spent a couple of days drooling on myself in a stupor trying to write that segment on my AmeriCorps year. It's hard to sum up everything I learned in a year to 1300 characters (with spaces!!).

I don't read the Student Doctor Network forums much. Only the first 2-3 Important Info posts of each thread that talks about the application. I decided that I can be perfectly neurotic on my own without needing to swim in an ocean of other people's neuroses.

This week overall hasn't been too productive. Wednesday sucked all around, but because it sucked, I was super productive at the gym. That makes three times this week! woohoo!