Saturday, June 5, 2010

I'm back! And I'm going to medical school!

So apparently I missed my monthly blog posts... for May and June.  Go me.

And I'm surprised I didn't post this in my march update... but I'm off to med school!  It's been an extremely long road - I got into medical school back in Nov '09, but I hadn't quite decided where I was going till mid March (and I finalized it in mid May).  I'm off to the University of Pennsylvania! 

Go Penn MedI can't believe my luck... really didn't expect I'd get in.  When I started the Columbia Post Bacc program ~ 2.5 years ago, I definitely did not expect I'd get into PennMed, much less medical school at all.  Less than 48% of med school applicants get in - and I wasn't really that special or anything.  So going into the Post Bacc program, I had my sights set relatively low.  I wanted to link into my state school and be done with it.

Then I met a really good friend at my post bacc program.   Let's call her Callie.  Over time we became really close and best friends.  Eventually, she convinced me that aiming low (in her words) "is stupid, and you have to aim a lot higher".  My response to that being "wth? That's just going to be a waste of time I won't get in"; but her response was even better "Well too bad, you are doing it anyway".  She convinced me to not link to my state school and go through the normal application process.  This ended up being a really good thing... I will now be going to a school that is ranked #2 for research and #7 for primary care.  It's one of only 3 schools which is ranked in the top 10 for both categories.

The best part about all this?  Sure, Penn's a well ranked school and the prestige is there etc... but what really matters (and I guess I didn't realize this till after I interviewed @ Penn) is that I feel like Penn's the medical school for me.  The faculty, the opportunities, the teaching styles are all amazing.  But what really shines are the students.  They seem like a fun batch - extremely diverse backgrounds (and I'm not just talking about skin color).  And they actually genuinely appreciated my unique (aka odd) background. 

I guess the point of this post was to say - thanks Callie.  Life works in mysterious ways - people always come into your life for one reason or another; you usually never know why till much later.  I'm lucky enough to know it right now.  Wouldn't be starting at Penn if you didn't nudge me just a tad bit there.  Sure she's in my life for a variety of reasons, and has influenced my growth in a myriad of ways like many of my other close friends; but this is by far the biggest impact she's had on my life.  And boy, I'm pretty sure it's a doozy of an impact.  So - thank you.  You are awesome :)