Anyone who reads my blog has probably already heard, but I got my first medical school acceptance last week while I was away interviewing in New York city :) University of Maryland School of Medicine! I can hold multiple acceptances until May 15th, so while I've accepted a spot in the class I don't HAVE to go there, but it certainly feels good to know that I'm definitely going to be a doctor, and that I definitely have the option of staying in Baltimore! I really did LOVE Maryland when I visited, so at least now I know that no matter what else happens, I can go to a school where I'll be really happy :)
I visited Mount Sinai and Columbia last week. Oh my. I've been to NYC before, but never while considering actually living there! It's such a different lifestyle. Even grocery shopping is different! I certainly wouldn't take a car - far too expensive to park it - so all of our travels home would have to be on the train, and all of our daily getting-around would require public transportation. I'm perfectly comfortable with the DC metro, but DC has the cadillac of metro systems compared to New York. We'd be living in University housing - both schools have couples apartment housing - since it's the only affordable way to live. We'd have to find Ben a job, which I fear might lead him back into the automotive industry (since there isn't much you can blow up in NYC without landing yourself in a little bit of hot water!). While I really believe that he'd ultimately be happier working on cars, he can't take on the tool debt again right now. Traffic is simply heinous, and if he had to commute out of the city to work he'd need to have a car, and we couldn't afford to keep a car there. There are many obstacles, not the least of which is coming to terms with the loss of family time. I think about Evan, who is 10 months old, and if we only saw him once a month or less he wouldn't be able to remember us from visit to visit. Leo would grow from 4 to 8 years old while we were gone - some of the most fun years, that we'd essentially miss. Lacy would grow from 10 to 14 - what an enormous change that we'd be missing! And Em will have a baby that we won't even get to know until it's 2 or 3 when we come home, and maybe Annie too. When I think about all that, I just can't do it.
But I LOVED Columbia. I think I loved it more than any school I've been to so far. It is just about everything I want in a medical school. In an urban area - lots of diversity in patients and cases. It has couples housing for Ben and I. Every student I met was incredibly enthusiastic and LOVED being there - they were stopping into the admissions office between classes, of their own free will, just to talk to us. Some even skipped class to continue telling us why they loved it so much. They have a few hours of lecture a day, plus small group and lab learning, and clinical exposure in the first year - students described the schedule as "low stress" and "easy to manage". All that, and it's the #11 medical school in the nation. It's the perfect combination of prestige and manageability. But it's in NY. Hopkins has the prestige and the location, but an incredibly daunting format for learning that doesn't seem the least bit "manageable" to me. Ugh. I really need to wake up one morning and find out that I was confused, and that Columbia is actually in Baltimore. Even Philly or DC would be better! I just don't think that I can give up what I have here to start an entirely new life in New York. And while Ben is being EXTREMELY supportive, I don't know that I can ask that of him. He really has surprised me - I don't know why it's surprising that he'd be so wonderful - but he keeps telling me "If we need to go to New York, then we'll go to New York. We'll make it work." We just need to do a lot of serious praying and get some real guidance.
I'm in the process of trying to like Hopkins, in the meantime. I loved Maryland, but if I could love Hopkins too, I'd feel much better about my future and it would be a much easier decision. Hopkins is instituting a new curriculum starting next Fall, and the students I talked to couldn't really answer my questions about it (since they've only experienced the old one). I really need to make sure I'm clear on it, because if the format is changing at all, that would really affect my decision. If they cut back on the intense lecturing, I could be much happier. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but we'll see. I'm writing to the admissions people to get some questions answered. Of course, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I haven't gotten into Hopkins. In fact, I got wait-listed at UVA, which dashed my hopes a little. I'm hoping that was more an issue of state of residence than of qualifications. All the other schools I'm interested in are more competitive than UVA, so I'm trying not to worry too much but it's tough. Yikes.
It's about time for me to blow this taco stand (no, I didn't quit NIH to work at a taco stand, but I like that expression), so I'm gonna go. At the end of the day, I'm very relieved about getting into Maryland, but I just don't feel satisfied. I feel like maybe I'm being led somewhere else, which is awfully scary...
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