Katie's Blog

turning a twenty-nothing into a twenty-something

[mad4medicine]

Let's be Frank, Dating Should Never Mean 'Settling'

One moment I'm on cloud nine about getting into medical school. The next moment.... I've come down, just a bit. And it's difficult to feel this elation challenged, even slightly, by someone so new in my life because he posed a question today that I didn't know how to answer: where does this-- if I move away for school next summer... leave us? I've dated around a bit the past year. While I always intended to find something long term, the truth is that I became comfortable with that transient flow of things.... the 15 first dates, the talking a few weeks and fizzling out. Some of my dates were so horrible they became source material for jokes at family parties. Others lasted the few weeks until I found out the guy (see: slimeball) was actually spoken for. We'll call this guy who questioned the outcome 8-months-down-the-line-after-the-first-date, 'Frank.' In my stupor of new-infatuation, I thought this was a valid question and scrambled for an answer. The stupor of new-infatuation is a horrible thing. In it, Frank could do no wrong, Frank was fucking adorable.... and I, the romantic-love-starved child who had finally come up for air after months of being a studious hermit, was suddenly made to feel that my triumphs were less triumphant. I was to feel that it wasn't my role to be exuberantly happy because somehow that might make a new potential beau unhappy. For a hideous second, that was apparently okay. And when the stupor of new-infatuation faded and I quit trying to appease Frank, Frank walked away. It stung, a little. It's always hard to invest yourself, however minimally, in someone else and then realize you never had value to them at all. And yet, I'm pretty grateful I dodged a bullet and learned something about myself for such a cheap price: I definitely don't desire someone who isn't 100% excited and supportive of me having an incredible, rockin' career as well. I don't want anyone who would tear me down for a second on such amazing news. And I don't need a guy that thinks 8 months ahead after one date... Whatever happened to just taking it slow, man?

[mad4medicine]

New Sight

I've never enjoyed wearing glasses. The pressure across the bridge of my nose, the annoying bit where you render them askew if you're trying to lay down and watch TV, how easily they're made dirty. So yesterday, I got contacts! Still trying to master the act of touching my eyeball repeatedly. It's a little nerve wracking and I worry that somehow this might damage my eyes long-term. But, it's wonderfully free feeling to not have to wear my glasses all the time and still get to see super clearly! I love it. Particularly since my new cat-eye glasses haven't grown on me quite yet. Happiness is in the little life improvements. They truly make all the difference.

[mad4medicine]

Med School Pre-Requisite: Failure

2.5 years, 2 MCAT prep courses, 3 MCATS, 18 hours of post-bacc work, 120 hours physician shadowing and counting. 3 interviews. 1 waitlist. 18 rejection letters. Thousands of dollars. Plenty of tears. I'll be very frank here: for the non-geniuses out there, applying to medical school is stressful, lonely, expensive, frustrating, and often disappointing. It's like being a dog that is endlessly, obsessively chasing a tire. Now, some people are natural geniuses and get into the top program of their choice with one go-- great, good for them. I'm not a natural genius, unfortunately. Instead, I've kept every rejection letter and email, praying that the next call I get will be a 'yes.' I keep thinking of that Michael Jordan quote on failure. You know the one. "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." That one. Let me tell you, as pertinent as that quote is to any walk of life, med schools never bring MJ up in an interview or secondary application. You will get that Robert Frost 'road less traveled' quote and any number of MLK quotes on injustice to test your ethics. They will want to know about who in your personal life influences you or who you've influenced. They want to know about a situation that challenged you or when you were extremely overwhelmed how you handled it or what you'd do differently the next time. They want to know what unique qualities will make you into an exceptional physician and what qualities you think a physician should have. They want to know why be a doctor, why their school, what would you do with 2 million dollars, how you'd fix the healthcare system. Yes, on the spot, please tell us how to fix what the president of the US hasn't been able to adequately solve in 8 years of office with top-of-their-field advisors. It wasn't until I was talking to a fellow medical school interviewee earlier in the fall that I realized I wasn't alone as a waitlisted reapplicant to schools. And I found that in my interviews, there were more nontraditional students than kids fresh out of college. In fact, unless the freshly-graduated college student had some sort of medical work experience before, during, or after college... they weren't at these interviews. Now, I'm not an interview pro.... and I've had fewer interviews than probably the regular candidate. But I made friends, made people laugh, and didn't let my nerves get in the way of showing the kind of person that I am. Mock interviews are helpful, but the best preparatory tip I ever received was: be yourself. It must've worked this time. A week after an interview last month, on the last possible day for an invitation into the class, I was on my way to shadow a physician and got a call from the Dean of the school. I was in. Parked outside the physician's office in my grown-up professional clothes and properly curled hair, I just sat in my car and cried like a little girl for ten minutes. I succeeded, finally.

[mad4medicine]

Twenty - Nothing.

Back in 2011, I had an interesting blog of my study abroad experience in Madrid, Spain. It was fabulous- pictures of my sweet host mother, the unique cuisine (tapas, anyone?), and jetting around a city so unlike an American metropolis with its culture and cobblestones. Ever since returning home, I've toyed with the idea of rebooting my blog or starting over. And yet, I faltered in returning to writing until now. I graduated in 2012 with a dual-degree from university, but my experiences across the Atlantic had left me hesitant and uncertain on my once-determined, expensive career path to become a physician. If you've never studied abroad, I'll explain culture shock both going there and coming back: it takes every childhood value and every book-learned skill, twists them upside down, and makes you relate to yourself and other people in an entirely new light. Specifically, everything that's the 'norm' here is not the new 'norm' that you'll learn and become accustomed to abroad... and vice versa. So when I-- a midwesterner accustomed to wide-open spaces, my own car, a conservative manner of politics, wearing tennis shoes and my hair up in a ponytail on a daily basis, and considering news as the Good Morning America and the Cincinnati Enquirer, etc.-- moved into a cozy (or as many might say, 'cramped') Spanish apartment in the basement of a plain building, where public transport was the only reasonable transport, people built upwards instead of outwards, my host mother was a liberal attached by the heartstrings to President Do-No-Wrong (Obama), world news was the staple of morning breakfast, and gym shoes and ponytails strictly belonged at the gym, I was in for a rude awakening. A rude awakening, but a life-changing one. I went abroad having no idea what I was getting myself into for 3 months. I came back having no idea what I was getting myself into for the rest of my life. Now, money mattered less, the fellow man mattered more. Quantity mattered less, quality mattered more. I mattered less, you mattered more. It wasn't even 3 months, it was 10 weeks... and I'm a different person now because of it. I'm sure my Spanish experiences will still bleed into this blog as there is still plenty of material I've never mentioned and it might add spice to the otherwise challenging task I have now before me: writing about well, a transitional period in life. For the longest time, I felt my current state of applying (and reapplying) to medical school, taking the MCAT three times, having the social life of a hermit crab for two years while working two somewhat dead-end jobs in customer service and being grossly underpaid for my two college degrees was dull and boring. And it is dull and boring, but I guess it's a pretty relatable existence. I don't have it all together like those other girls from my elite college prep high school. I'm not married, never had a boyfriend, don't have a 'big girl' benefits job. I am twenty-five, living paycheck to paycheck, at home, in debt to my parents, and have nothing substantial to my name but two degree certificates from university in a manila folder, safely tucked away. I can't even afford to frame the damn things. I'm a twenty-nothing that reads those Women-of-the-Year awards in Glamour in every December issue and swears upon it that by the time I'm a thirty-something.... I'll be one of those women. I'll be recognized. I'll have made a difference, somehow. People say overnight successes are years in the making... but no one writes about the realities of those quiet, unsuccessful years: the twenty-nothing years while they're 'in the making.' Why? Because every twenty-nothing is too busy pinning our diy-projects on Pinterest and watching cat videos. It's true. I do it too.