medical school

I think the hardest part about receiving good news is the inability to share it with the people you most love and care about. I wanted to hug/tell all of them in person today, but they’re all 3000 miles away, so calling and texting had to suffice.

This morning, I decided to check up on the status of the school I interviewed at most recently. They meet on Tuesdays, and you better believe that I was ready to refresh the page continuously throughout the day until it showed me something different.

At 10 a.m. in the morning, it was still “Decision Pending.”

At 12 p.m., my mom called me and talked to me for a while, telling me not to feel too anxious (I wasn’t) and not to feel disappointed because if I didn’t get in, this school wasn’t part of God’s plan (duly noted). When I hung up, I refreshed the page again, the status had changed, and I called my mom right back. I signed in and out half a billion times just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

I’ve been accepted into medical school!

:D :D :D

My mom was so excited, she almost choked on what she was eating. (She was coughing though, so she was okay.)

In my eyes, this is tied for first place with Western University of Health Sciences down in Pomona, California. This one’s located in West Virginia, in the “coolest small town in the U.S.” (Not kidding. I really passed by a sign that said this.) Cost of living is freakishly cheap. For your own room in a 2-bedroom house 1.2 miles away from the school, all utilities included, it’s $325/month. The tuition is expensive (~$50k a year), but it all goes back to the students, and I was definitely able to see that in the tour. I read page after page after page of awesome-ness about the school. Someone referred to it as the “country club of medical schools.”

I also found out about an awesome teaching opportunity they have there. I love anatomy and would be overjoyed to be able to teach it. They offer a graduate teaching position that you can apply for. If you get it, your third and fourth years are split for rotations–half, you spend teaching and the other half, you spend doing your rotations. In exchange, they take off your tuition for your third and fourth year. That’s ~$100,000 saved right there. (They also pay you while you teach, so I can’t see how this can get any better.)

But what attracted me the most was the environment. The people there are so, so genuine and friendly. (Something you honestly don’t see that often anymore, or not as often as as you’d hope, anyway.) The president of the school met with and spoke with each of us. I heard from the students that he hosts a Thanksgiving dinner in one of the school buildings for all the students who aren’t going home for Thanksgiving. The students are super-happy, and there’s free food everywhere, especially when exams are coming up. They genuinely care about their students as if they were their own children.

super-happy right now. :]!