HOT!

Atlanta is HOT during the summer.

(...so hot that I had to make the word 'hot' red...)

AMAZING !

WOW! If you are interested in medicine, you should shadow a physician! You should shadow a physician even if you're just thinking about medicine.

On Thursday of this past week I had an incredible experience shadowing three surgeons in Orlando (my hometown) at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. I saw 9 surgeries including tumor removal, appendix removal, stone removal, a baby with a button inside their stomach, a trauma case with a kid on a ATV, and a lot more. I know not all medicine is like this - but for a guy like me who wants to go into pediatric surgery - this was heaven!

I got to scrub up and was in the room live! Fun stuff! And to top things off, when I would follow the doctors around on their rounds, they would think I was a surgeon as well, and would call me "Doctor" as well - awesome feeling! haha... one day it'll be true. One day...

Junior and Senior Year

After doing the whole high school and then the college thing, I've come to realize that Junior and Senior year in both types of schooling are quite similar.

Junior year of high school you're in the process of taking your SAT and/or ACT. You're applying to colleges, trying to beef up your application as best as you can for the hope that the right admissions counselor will think your personal statement is funny,or that they have the same interest as you and you're surefire into that school. College is similar. Come your junior year you begin to think about the future, what you want to do, is what you're doing the right thing to do. In college you start to take tests like the LSAT (law), MCAT (medical!), and the GRE if you plan to go off to graduate school in a particular study. Once again you start the process of beefing up your application, trying to find the right way to put your essays all in the hope that the right person will read your essay and make you that surefire candidate for their school.

Senior year I hope will be the same for me. Once you're in to a school, you're in. Sure, you still have to do good in your classes, but the pressure of getting into a school is off your back. A HUGE relief. Many times people get something called 'senioritis' - I can only hope for that 'disease' this year. :)

Side note: I'm now done with summer school! YEY! Not that it wasn't the time of my life (sarcasm), but I'm glad to be done and can start my 9-day summer vacation.

Finals

I'm SOO close to being done with Summer School finals! I know I've been fairly MIA, but this summer has been pretty crazy. Between studying, going to class, college council stuff, volunteering, medical school applications, MCAT'ing, tour guiding, and trying to find sometime to relax (after all, it IS my summer) I'm trying to update this blog.

Anyways, summer school is over on Friday -- SOO close then off to Florida I go! :)

THE Process

So right about now, I'm in the midst of doing my medical school applications. I will admit - they are NOT fun at all. Anyways, as I was about to start my secondaries, I figure I would post a little about the actual application process.

First, you have to submit what they call your "Primary". The Primary is like the common application - it has all of your basic information including your classes, transcript, MCAT scores, extracurriculars. It also contains the all-important Personal Statement. (FYI - you're personal statement can only be 5,300 characters - that's about page and a quarter MAX -- try explaining yourself in that much space... not an easy gig).

After you submit your primary, many of your schools will offer you a "Secondary" which consists of sometimes up to 3 more essays, and more information about yourself and why you wanna go to that specific school. Some would think that you can just use the same essay for all of them - no, not so much - medical schools aren't stupid - they know a 'general' essay from an original.

Then you wait. And wait, and wait, and wait for the hopes that a medical school will invite you for an interview, and after a very successful interview, you get asked to sit one of their 100 chairs.

Not a fun process I suppose - but one that needs to be done. :)



*Note: I've recently gotten myself into a lot of music by Journey. Particularly the song "Don't Stop Believin" Amazing.

Where have I been?!

First off, sorry about not posting up in a while - I've been fairly busy, but I'm now on a path that's going great and a *little* more relaxed.

Between my last post and this post, a lot has been happening. I took the MCAT on Tuesday the 24th, on that Friday I had a quiz in the BioChemistry course I'm taking, and then on that following Monday I had an exam. A lot of testing in just a few days.

Anyways, I'm now consuming my life with things for my dance group, Karma, I'll talk about them on a later post. There's a lot of work that goes on behind a dance group - my area is the uniforms. It's tough trying to design both men and women's outfits, get the tailors, the sizes, colors, accessories, how they are going to work in our dance... etc.

I can't believe that the summer is already coming to a close! I just started this summer ordeal, and it's over?! Already....? I need another vacation.

I'm off to go volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House. More to come soon!