The “F” Word

It is a demoralizing feeling to fail. All the stress, small successes, tears, determination, and borderline caffeine ODs added up, but at the end of the day, I just didn’t make the cut.

I received the rejection letter from my favorite medical school on Friday evening, bringing a whole new level of meaning to the phrase, “Valentine’s Day rejection” (bad joke, I know, but it had to be made). Given this turn of events, I have one more shot to get into medical school this cycle. My 2nd and final interview is at the end of the week. As optimistic as I try to remain on a normal basis, my (slightly more practical) inner monologue has accepted that my chances of acceptance for this coming fall are slim at best.

In light of all that, here is my attempt to delineate, with as much wisdom as a 22-year-old with a bruised ego and confused immediate future can muster, a procedure for dealing with such potential large-scale failure as this.

1. Choose immediate reaction to failure: This part is critical, especially if you are in a room full of other people when you receive news of said failure (I was. It was awkward). You can blow a gasket/scream/cry/throw things/aggressively show your frustration/etc., or you can remain composed. I suggest the latter.* I was slightly surprised at my lack of an external reaction, but it worked wonders for relieving the social tension in the room.
2. Begin to process said failure: walk into kitchen, realize there is no wine, grab car keys and acquire wine, open wine, drink. I do not recommend skipping this step. It is a very good step to have.
   

   Self-explanatory.

3. Host the inevitable pity party: mine happened the next morning, once I re-opened the envelope and the full weight of that rejection hit me. IMPORTANT NOTE! Get through this step quickly for the sake of your mental and emotional health. I prefer to have a power-hour-style pity party and permanently eject those thoughts from my mind once I emerge on the other side of the hour. No use spending any more time and energy uselessly berating yourself for what is most likely 20/20 hindsight (which, in my case, it is).
4. Self-reflect, but without the pity party this time: what do you do if your ideal plan didn’t work out? Sitting around, twiddling your thumbs and waiting for the next chance at that one plan is probably not the best strategy. Analyze the process; there is probably a reason hiding somewhere for why you failed, yes? If you can, try and find it on your own. If you can’t seem to find it, ask someone else who might know. Take all of the constructive criticism you can absorb. Identify some ways you can work towards improving that aspect (or aspects) of yourself so that you will be more likely to succeed when you do decide to re-tackle Plan A.
5. Brainstorm a Plan B and get to work: whatever you identified as potentially needing improvement in step 4, find a Plan B that will help you make that improvement. Not a competitive enough GPA? Find a master’s or post-bacc program that will allow you to start fresh and have a stronger GPA to show for it. MCAT score not that awesome? Give those old lecture notes a dusting-off and get back on the study grind. Not enough medical exposure? Find a job/internship/volunteering position/something that will allow you to gain that exposure. So on and so forth. This step is what I am currently working with, and for me, the most likely problem I’ve identified is my GPA (it’s actually quite good, especially compared to the average science major GPA at my undergrad institution, but it’s not incredible, and that doesn’t always cut it compared to medical school averages…sigh).
6. DO NOT GIVE UP! This is by far the most important step; for me, I know that I am meant to become a doctor, whether I get to start that journey in this application cycle or not. So, whatever helps me get there eventually will ultimately be a step in the right direction; I’m choosing to refer to it as the “scenic route” to medical school. Pick your own scenic route and get to work! Surround yourself with friends and/or family who will encourage you throughout this process. If praying is your thing, do it all the time; if it’s not, find some other form of meditation or self-relaxation or counseling or something that will keep your head straight on your shoulders. DO NOT compare yourself to others who may have gotten to where you want to be faster. Their successes do not imply your failures.

Hopefully some of that made sense. I’m kind of a word-vomit machine this morning, so I apologize if that was overly wordy or nonsensical.

* Unless you are not in a room full of people. Carry out the former option to your heart’s content.

A ghost heart?

On this Valentine’s Day, while much of the world is busy with overpriced flower bouquets from Walmart, half-eaten boxes of heart-shaped chocolate, and social media updates of lovey-dovey togetherness, I can think of something much more interesting: DECELLULARIZED PIG HEARTS. I spotted this gem on the TED Blog and it was so awesome I had to share it. It’s an incredible idea, and has the potential to save so many people with sick hearts. Also, here’s another article from Biomedical Materials about ghost organs: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-605X/8/1/014106

Read up, my friends!

That One Time in the Pathology Lab

Advance Warning: if you don’t like descriptions or mental images of internal human anatomy, you probably shouldn’t read this.

Otherwise, continue onward!

I used to volunteer in my university’s hospital system at the Surgical Pathology Department. I only spent one semester there, because I was starved for human interaction (Fun Fact: this was the same semester in which I fully decided 100% that I wanted to become a doctor rather than a pharmacist. Too little human interaction back there for my tastes, sorry guys), but I learned SO MUCH about human anatomy in that time. My duties consisted mostly of organizing patient slides, maintaining patient records, and sorting through incoming biopsy requests from other neighboring hospitals, but I was also allowed to shadow in the pathology laboratory during my time there. Let me tell y’all, that experience was eye-opening. The first day I was allowed in there is seared into my brain so clearly.

I walked back to the lab, still not completely sure of where I was headed, until the attending pathologist barked out at me: “Hey, you. Volunteer. Grab an apron.” Just like that. No introductions, no stupid ice-breakers, no small-talk, no transition time. I got there, and I was immediately immersed. Not even five minutes later, I found myself shadowing a pathologist’s assistant (I sorely wish I remembered her name, because she was awesome, but she and I were never on the same shift again after that first visit; we’ll call her Sarah) who was talking me through the procedure of dissecting the results of a double mastectomy for cytology samples. I held a human breast in my hands. I felt the difference in density between the normal breast tissue and the tumor, and I was elated when I was able to successfully tell Sarah where the tumor started and ended. My elation was mixed with a sickeningly dead feeling in my stomach when I thought about the fact that this was not a model like the ones in my undergrad anatomy lab; only a matter of hours prior, it had been a live and functioning organ, and it had been attached to a real woman somewhere in that hospital, and she was fighting breast cancer while also having to become accustomed to the angry, sutured wounds in the place of her breasts. It was simultaneously the strangest, most somber, and most incredible moment of my medical experience to date.

Internal anatomy of human breast

Sarah moved right on, though, and the next thing I knew, we were dissecting a uterus/bladder/assortment of abdominal lymph nodes from an older woman who had presented with metastatic uterine cancer. I had no previous frame of reference with which to compare the size of these organs, but it was fascinating to see her pea-sized lymph nodes and feel their slightly grainy texture upon being sliced. Her uterus was tiny, and the fimbriae were all completely intact, their tiny fringe-like projections still reaching out towards nothing.

After that came a placenta from a recently delivered set of twins. I’m sorry, I’m sure experiencing the Miracle of Life is great and all, but I can muster no amount of reverence for the placenta like I did for the breast tissue or the hysterectomy samples. Placentas are gross.

Reaction upon observing the placental dissection.

Moving on, my final experience of the day was a foot-long segment of colon that had been decimated by Crohn’s disease. I got to identify the sigmoid colon, but much of the sample’s gross anatomy had been stretched and distorted by the disease. I got to palpate the internal wall of the colon, and it was so strange to touch and experience the fuzzy texture that the uneven topography of the microscopic colon crypts produced. My roommate for three out of my four years of college has been living with Crohn’s for a couple of years now, and I couldn’t help thinking about how she might end up as a result of this disease; would her colon end up looking like this person’s, diseased and tired and stretched out on a pathologist’s dissection table? Maybe I overthought it, but maybe I didn’t. That day was a massive growing experience, and every time I think about it is a reminder of why I want to do what I want to do.