Exhalation

I had my interview day at the University of Maryland School of Medicine today, which I think went decently well. It’s difficult to develop a metric by which to grade the “wellness” of an interview, but so far my rubric states that if the interviewer and I are able to carry on some semblance of positive dialog, the engagement was a success. However, today’s events got entirely eclipsed this afternoon when I received a phone call from Loma Linda University letting me know that I’d been accepted.

Wow! Accepted into medical school! The reality of this continues to percolate through out my cortex, but as of now I’ve been able to assimilate at least one fact both exciting and frightening: regardless of what Maryland or the other six outstanding schools decide, I will be able to begin medical school in the fall. This fall. Before the year is out I will have officially begun the next phase my lifetime of learning (and for a good while yet, standardized tests, application processes, and interviews). w00t!

Going back to my day at Maryland, I got to spend some time with both second-year and fourth-year students. To me, the difference between the two classes was striking. While naturally more confident than the prospective students (hey, they’re already in), the second-years were most definitely students. Students in a far more intense and focused stage of their education, but students just the same. The fourth-years, by contrast, were doctors. Though they still had the youthful look, somewhere in their intervening years the fourth-years had gained the affect and presence of a clinician.

I wonder if the people who know me now will notice a similar change in me in a few years, or if the metamorphosis is so gradual as to avoid detection.