Done-zos

I am officially done. Now, the waiting game :(
Luckily, I have a life, so I don't sit around refreshing my e-mail and whining in forums like a small minority of people on SDN like to do. I understand, I really do. But...get a life, people. Threads would be twice as informative and half as long if people just quit making whiny posts every day. Watch tv. There's so many shows. Game of Thrones, Homeland, Portlandia, The Walking Dead. SO MANY.

Round 4 went alright. My medical student interviewer was a stony-faced person. Conversation my butt. You lie, admissions office! I loved my faculty interviewer though. He was funny and awesome. I would love to have him as my instructor. Overall, I left with a very lukewarm feeling of the school. Maybe our tour guides were just very deadpan. Or they just had a test. The staff were very welcoming and enthusiastic but the students didn't seem like that at all.

This has nothing to do with my impression of the school, but I was also really put off by one of the students. I'm a fastidious eater, and this was one of those types that gobbles everything and flings utensils and crumbs around (at me, in fact), all while talking with food in mouth, leaving trash around. I walked away from lunch feeling gross.

Round 5 went well. I was debating whether or not to go to my interview, but I'm glad I did. I bumped into my friend who was a second year there, so it was nice to catch up to him for a bit. I wasn't expecting to see him at all, since it was spring break, but he is one of Those. The Smart Ones.

So far, I've enjoyed talking to fellow interviewees on the interview trail. Some people are very funny and fun to talk to. I met a couple weirdos that I'll save for another day.

However, I will say that I get really annoyed when kids fresh out of college declare that they feel "omigosh, like, so old!!" Statements like that stem from a powerful naivety that I honestly think can only come from a life spent living in too much comfort. I wanted to tell these people to shut up and try living the kind of life where you evaluate every penny spent to get the most out of every dollar, as I did. Or working multiple jobs shifts to cover living expenses and rising school tuition, as a lot of my classmates and close friends have done, sacrificing the A's they could have achieved in favor of being able to survive and attend college in the first place. People like that don't admit they feel old. They're too busy to think about it.

People joke all the time about how working at Starbucks, or some other service job, would be so much preferable to medical school or residency. But there are people who do that just to be able to apply for medical school. Or undergraduate school. It's not something to joke about. It's life.

/Endrant

I broke off on a tangent, probably cuz I'm tired.

I got dropped off at the airport right after my interview and celebrated with a nice, tall, cold glass of beer. And chili cheese fries. And frozen yogurt. I tried to nap on the plane but the flight attendants wake me up every time they came around asking about drinks or garbage.

Things I look forward to doing now that I'm done:
-Working out
-Vegetating
-Youtube
-Netflix

Round Three...

I fell in love with school #3. I loved everything about it - from the campus, to the hospitals, to the area, to the qualities in the student body and faculty. I enjoyed being there, and would really enjoy going there. The fit is perfect for me...I only hope that my interviewers think that too and convey that to the Ad-Coms.

So I feel kind of guilty, conflicted, and very much anxious about the letter I received when I came home from my flight. I was accepted into an institution. One that I liked. One that also had a pretty happy student body and committed faculty. One that I was decidedly agreeable on attending, if given the chance...Except now I have my eyes on something else, and I feel guilty in that I'm being greedy. I spend all this time and energy thinking, "I just need to get into one, just anywhere is fine." But that's clearly not the case. I kind of wish I could be ecstatic about this, while still being hopeful about another school. I feel guilty because I'm not jumping for joy and cartwheeling down the hallway.

I'm so weird.

Round two.

You meet some interesting people at interviews. I didn't know this. That we would have opportunities to mingle and talk with people. I've started to wonder whether I would want certain people as my classmate or doctor. People say interesting things that amused or irritated me in certain ways...Usually the ones that irritated me were statements that made me think, "wait....are you joking..? Or is this how you really think?" I'll definitely pocket some of the stories for a better day. You'd think that I would be too focused on my interview to people-watch, but people-watching is easy.

My traveling group was different from my interviewing sub-group. My traveling group was just composed of the four of us who happened to use the same shuttle service, so we were transported as a group. We were dropped off at the airport at the same time, so we decided to have a meal and get a round of drinks to unwind at the airport. Best way to unwind, in my opinion.