Well. Here we are. It's almost 5 in the morning, I'm drinking a blood orange San Pellegrino I got from a patient, and tonight will be my last night here on the oncology ward. The MCAT is done and in the dust. My score put me firmly into the osteopathic camp, which really, is probably where I've belonged this whole time. I graduated college. I missed summa cum laude by .02 GPA points, but I'm still graduating with honors.

I made it through my school's pre-professional committee process and was rated as a "strong" candidate. This is the third ranking in the list of six rankings they give out, with the top three usually scoring interviews and ultimately acceptances. In the end, I had five letters of recommendation from some of my professors, an adviser, and my research mentor.  I then received a letter from the committee itself, and the another one from a DO that I shadowed in June.

July 14, 2013 I applied to med school through AACOMAS. I picked out ten schools, one as close as three hours away, some as far away as the other side of the country. August 14th I received my first secondary, and this past Friday I sent in my last secondary application. I received secondaries from all ten schools I applied to, but I elected not to complete one of them. The school that I decided not to continue applying to had a residency requirement of five years post-graduation...and really... I didn't want to live there.

I made it through the pre-med years!

In the next year, I will (hopefully) be invited for interviews and then be weighing my options when it comes to offers. I have a few top choice schools, but I'd really like to wait until I've visited the campuses to make any sort of determination of what I consider my top choices. My very supportive spouse has no real inclination towards one city over another, but ultimately he needs to be happy too so his opinion is certainly a factor.

In the meantime, I've accepted a promotion to the "Advanced" version of what I'm currently doing, which will increase my responsibilities to include starting IV's, drawing blood, performing EKG's, and probably several other things I'm forgetting. Oh, and, it's in an emergency room closer to my house that doesn't involve paying for parking or driving across the city anymore.

I'm looking forward to the next several months - I'm also taking some time to watch tv, read some books (Game of Thrones for one...), sleep late, and just enjoy being alive. I'd like to take a moment to encourage anyone who's been following the journey so far to go and do that thing you've been waiting for the right moment for. Your moment, like mine was, is now. Capture it.