Our "wedsite"

It just occurred to me that people might like to check out our wedding website (after all, I did make it for OTHER PEOPLE to look at!). So, here it is:

www.theknot.com/ourwedding/JennaKeyser&BenBonner

I need to vent

My dog died today :'( My sweet, beloved Jasmine. My very first pet, that my mom and I had to beg my dad for over the course of many weeks, months and years. She was in relatively good health for being 15 1/2 years old - just some weakness in her hind end and gradual vision and hearing loss. Standard for a dog that old. But last night, she apparently had some sort of neurological episode. She may have had a stroke, but my mom looked up her symptoms online and it looks more like a brain tumor that finally began producing symptoms. She started throwing up all over the place and her eyes were bouncing back and forth and she lost the use of her legs. She eventually stopped throwing up, but her eyes kept moving back and forth in her head all night and all morning, and she could only hold herself up on her front legs for a few seconds at a time. She hadn't eaten in a day and a half and she was refusing water, which was a sure sign that she knew she was dying - Jasmine normally drinks water like it's going out of style. My mom took her to the vet this morning to be put to sleep. Apparently the first shot (a sedative that they give before the lethal shot) stopped the eye movements, so she could actually make eye contact, which made my mom feel better. She said that Jasmine gave her one last kiss before they gave her the lethal shot. How heartbreaking is that? So it was a pretty sad day for me.

To distract myself, I'm stealing this survey from Amberly's blog, and I'm going to fill it out. You don't have to read it if you don't want to - it's just self-therapy.

I am: a child of God

I think: that this country deserves more honest leadership, and that Barack Obama is going to win next week

I want: to be an unsually caring and comforting doctor

I have: more happiness than anyone deserves

I dislike: mustard. milk. asparagus. lies.

I miss: college. I made some of the best friends in the world, and some amazing memories

I fear: losing someone I love

I feel: an immense sense of responsibility, having been given the opportunity to become a doctor

I hear: the theme song from "Friends" - it's on TV

I smell: dinner. my dad is whipping up something to eat. i will miss this when i move out!

I crave: more time with ben. i can never get enough!

I cry: because my dad & my grammy aren't saved. and because i miss jasmine.

I usually: make too much of little things. it's something i need to work on.

I regret: not taking every opportunity to tell my family about the Lord

I search: for the courage to face death one day.

I wonder: how God will bless us next, and how He will carry us through the challenges of the next four years and beyond in our new marriage

I love: God, Ben, my family, and medicine.

I care: about the homeless, the economy, the war, better healthcare, and seeing washington change. and i truly, deeply believe that only one of these candidates can hack it.

I always: say I love you before i leave whoever i'm with

I worry: about balancing my roles as mother and wife with my career as a doctor. that i'll disappoint my kids sometimes. it's the kind of job where you can't always drop it and say "i choose my family". someone might lose their life.

I am not: as outgoing as I feel sometimes. not sure why...

I remember: what it was like to fall in love so many years ago, because i still feel it every day

I believe: that God is behind our marriage 100%

I dance: at the bar with my friends, or with ben

I sing: alone in the car

I don't always: remember the events on my calendar. which is why i keep three calendars, so i can always access one of them!

I argue: because i miss him and i want to hoard all his time for myself. but i know i can't.

I write: well. it's gotten me very far in life.

I win: when i finally marry ben in may :) I WIN!

I lose: not much. i'm usually the one to find things.

I wish: that i had more freedom to have kids when i want to, rather than being forced to wait until it fits into my educational/career timeline

I listen: to my ipod a lot. sometimes all day, when i need to just keep to myself and be "alone" even though i'm at work. it's my escape.

I don't understand: John McCain, anymore. I've always had so much respect for him. I'll never understand how he could prioritize getting elected above selecting a useful, experienced VP candidate who could actually contribute to his administration.

I can usually be found: in the lab, or with ben

I watch: the world go by, every day. i try to savor little bits of beauty and little moments of peace, so that i always appreciate the life that we're given here.

I need: water, food, warmth and love. that's really all.

I forget: the arguments and disagreements and remember the feeling of his arms around me

I am happy: that i'll be joining ben's wonderful family in a few short months :)

I Hate Money.

This week's marriage class was on finances. So now I'm rapidly spiraling downward into clinical depression. It's not that I didn't know it was going to be tight for us, but putting it on paper really sucked. I have thought about putting together a budget countless times before now, but I really had no clue what to expect in terms of my medical school financial aid budget for living expenses so I figured it was probably useless to try to crunch numbers. Now that I've gotten into UMD, I used their living expense budget as an example to work with. I don't know if I've ever explained this before, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but med school financial aid works like this: No one works, everyone takes out loans for tuition and living expenses. That's just life, and there's no way around it. You simply CANNOT work your way through medical school. You will fail, or kill yourself, or both. So each school, depending on cost of living in its surrounding area and what kind of housing options, medical insurance, etc. it offers (if any), makes up a living expenses budget, which when combined with tuition and fees costs, becomes the maximum amount that they can qualify for in government grad loans. If the school says its students can live on $21,000 a year in living expenses, that's what they can borrow (plus tuition and fees obviously). If it says $13,000 a year, that's what they can borrow. Otherwise, you're looking at private students loans from banks, which rely on your credit score and the current economic climate (not so great, I'm sure you've noticed!), and always have a variable interest rate. Government loan rates are fixed, and some of them don't accrue interest while you're in school. So basically, a school can really screw you over financially if their budget doesn't really meet your realistic living expense needs. Since Hopkins offers cheap-ass first-year housing ($425 a month!), that's what they use to calculate living expenses. Comes out to less than $14,000 a year. I need to talk to them and find out if there's a different budget for married students who can't utilize that housing, but for now, it looks like I couldn't even afford to go there if, by chance, I were to get in. They also consider parent AND step-parent income when determining how much you're eligible to borrow, which would also screw me since my parents aren't helping me pay for this. Maryland, on the other hand, has a living expense budget of about $21,000 a year, which comes out to about $600 more per month to live on than Hopkins' budget. AND they consider students independent and don't ask for any parental information. YEAH.

So anyway, after putting it all down on paper, even with UMD's great living expense budget, it's still going to be rough. I hope you all will forgive me if I can't meet you for lunch or go out to the bar for a while... like the next 4 years! I know that God will provide, because like I keep saying, He didn't bring us this far to watch us crumble. And I know that if we're faithful in our giving, He will be faithful to bless us with what we need and more. It's so wonderful and comforting to have that promise to fall back on, and it's the only thing that's keeping me sane, really :) And I also know that Ben usually makes a good deal more than his base pay (which is what I used to create our budget) because he works a lot of overtime, so as long as the OT is still available, we'll have extra income. But we will DEFINITELY have to be cutting back. As Ben put it, from his oh-so-dramatic point of view, "we can't afford to have any fun" :) I don't think it's that bad, we just need to find inexpensive ways to have fun. Living so tightly won't be "fun", by any means, but we'll have plenty of our own happiness to enjoy. Just coming home to our own place and to each other every night sounds like an incredible amount of fun to me :)

This is a textbook, grade-A reality check for us, but it's putting us in the right frame of mind and preparing us for the challenges that we have ahead of us, which we may have under-estimated a little bit in the past. No one ever said married life would be easy, but with Ben, at least I know that it will never be dull or un-fulfilling. As my mom says, "Life is always an adventure with you, Ben" :) And that's what I have to look forward to! We'll have stories to tell about the days when we were poor, that's for sure.

Oh, and before I go, I got an acceptance letter from Drexel yesterday :) Absolutely not going there - I REALLY didn't like it when I visited - but it's still cool to get an acceptance from a medical school, regardless of which one it is. Yay!

Some news...

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...

I'll warn you, this is going to be a mushy one.

What a sweet, wonderful man I have. I'll admit I was a little annoyed when he texted me yesterday at 5:39 telling me he had just walked in the door and was going to take a shower and come over, and I didn't see his face til nearly 7:30. Really, though, it's what he does, and I've come to expect it. He's slow. He gets it from his entire family - he can't help it. But I suspected that he was probably out combing through birthday cards to find the perfect one (or two, as it turned out). While he doesn't plan far enough in advance to buy a card before the day-of, he is very thoughtful in picking them out. I know this about him, and so I don't let the last-minute purchase bother me - it's what he does with everything, and it doesn't mean that he doesn't care. If he didn't care he'd run in, grab the first decent card he picked up, and run out. It actually means more to me that he was late because he spent so much time picking them out and writing wonderful notes in them about how excited he is about our life together. He knows I get irritated when he's late, but finding a meaningful card, to him, was worth pissing me off a little, which is actually sweet in a very backward, twisted way :) Sometimes the thoughtfulness of your significant other is obvious, sitting there on the surface and readily recognizable. Sometimes it's hidden, and if you're not careful you'll miss it or mistake it for something else. I'm glad we've had so much time to get to know each other so well, so that we can find those little things in each other :)

So anyway, when he finally did arrive, he had a dozen of the most beautiful red roses I think I've ever seen - they really were amazingly perfect - his two cards, and my birthday gifts. Dior J'Adore perfume, and a pair of GORGEOUS CZ drop earrings that I really wanted for the wedding but couldn't buy for myself. I'm so glad he bought them for me - it'll be that much more special to wear them on my wedding day :)

One of my cards was a "wife" card, and it was actually a perfect description of our relationship so far, even though we're not quite "there" yet. He said that there was another guy in the store with his little boy looking at birthday cards, who he eventually started talking to, and who told him it was his wife's birthday. Ben said "yeah, today is my wife's birthday too." When he told me that story, it wasn't like he said it because we're almost there so he just said "wife" for the hell of it, he told me the story as if it was something special that happened to him - like he had just really enjoyed the experience of referring to me as his wife, and this was the first time he had said to to someone and had it actually mean something (he and his immediate family have referred to me as "the wife" for several years now). Anyway, it warmed my heart a little, I'm not gonna lie :)

I know he's happy to be marrying me, but I love seeing little glimpses of the deeper meaning and the true excitement he feels. That more mature side of him that realizes the gravity of all this, that sees how important and how real it is. I think that our marriage class is really doing a number on him - it really has him thinking about this on a deeper level. It's doing the same thing to me. As if we weren't already deeply connected and committed to each other, this class is really helping us to take it to another level entirely. It's making us discuss and decide and learn and commit on all sorts of things, the most important of which being the quality and finality of our marriage. That we're both committed to more than a mediocre, functioning marriage - we're committed to an excellent one, and all the hard work it will require, every day of our lives. That we're both committed for life, with no exceptions at all, no matter what. Like, SERIOUSLY, no matter what. No matter what comes up, no matter how badly we might hurt one another, no matter how stressful life might get, no matter how convinced we might become one day that we made a mistake - God brought us here, and God does NOT want us to divorce, so God will always make a way for us if we'll let Him in. That's the bottom line, scary as it may seem and crazy as it may sound to other people. We've had the conversation, and that's what we've come to. And so, with that, I think I'll hereby remove the "D" word from my vocabulary.

So I think that concludes my mushy streak for today. I'm leaving for New York City this afternoon for my Mount Sinai and Columbia interviews (tomorrow and Friday), so I won't get to see Ben til Friday evening :'( I think that's part of my mushiness problem. We watched P.S. I Love You last night (I got to make him and my dad watch a chick flick since it was my birthday) and I listened to the soundtrack on the way in to work today, so I've just been in mushy-mode the entire day, being sad for myself and thinking about him. I listen to his heavy metal music when I miss him - is that weird? Either that or sappy love songs - the complete opposite, but they both help in their own way. One reminds me of him, and one reminds me of how wonderful love is and how lucky I am. There I go, swerving back into the mushiness! So anyway, my mom and step dad are coming with me to NY because no one wanted me to go alone, and they wanted to sight-see anyway (they both love NY). My mom is taking us out for dinner up there, since we both share the same birthday and haven't gotten to celebrate together yet. I should've bargained for a birthday shopping trip instead of dinner. Idiot. Oh well, I'm sure dinner will be delicious. Unfortunately my step dad (Tim) is a total meat-and-potatoes type, so we won't get to go anywhere exotic. I bet the sushi in NY is amazing. Hmmph.

It's just about time for me to head home from work to leave for our trip, so catch ya later!

I'll end with a shout-out to my fellow Bonner-phile and birthday buddy (yes, I share my birthday with TWO other people within my family)... HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH!

Boredom & Desperation

In reality, there's really no reason I should feel "bored" at this particular point in my life (or so it would seem to the outside observer). I have a wedding coming up in less than 8 months, I'm a bridesmaid for one of my bridesmaids, I'm still interviewing for medical school and waiting for decisions, I'm working full time, and somehow my weekends are ALWAYS full, without exception. I guess maybe "bored" isn't the way to put it. Restless perhaps. The major wedding planning phase is essentially over, and it makes me sad :'( Being in the midst of wedding planning is addicting, and when your stash starts to run dry, withdrawal sets in, and you get desperate for more.

So, on that note, I've begun digging for details to attend to. Yesterday I toiled over my processional and recessional and reception introductions. I've gone back and forth several times about whether or not everyone should enter in pairs, who should walk with who, who will leave with who, who to introduce at the reception and with who... Don't make fun. These silly little details are really all I have. I started looking into prelude and ceremony music also for the string players. Sometimes I think classical guitar would be nice too...

I also addressed all my STDs (at least for everyone whose address I have) the other night. Again, desperate for something wedding-related to do. Ben really wanted to help - so sweet - so he stuffed envelopes. His handwriting is atrocious (literally, atrocious). I still need to finalize and print up the inserts for those, with the wedding website and the plea to book hotel rooms early :) That's really half the point of sending them - to get people to start booking so that our block of rooms can be expanded. And also to let people know that it's on a Friday so that if they need to make work arrangements in advance they'll have plenty of time. But I'm trying really hard not to send them until November so as not to appear too psycho about it - we'll see how long I can hold out :)

Next will be the tuxes and the flowers. The tuxes can really wait a while though. I'm trying to talk Ben into pinstripes :) I think that would be really cool and different. He's open to it - we'll have to see how he likes it in person. As for flowers, I'm pretty excited about that. I don't know why I haven't gotten together with the florist sooner! I have so many ideas but no clue how to fit them together, so I'm really excited to talk with someone who can put it all together for me and make some helpful suggestions. I guess I was originally waiting to have it all put together myself before I went in to the florist, but I'm sure it'll work out better if I go in there open to their ideas. I suppose we need to talk to the cake lady too. Again, I have some ideas, but it'll be fun to see where a designer can go with them. I'm clearly not a cake designer, though I try :)

I'm just so nervous to lock myself into anything because I know how indecisive I can be, but I think maybe it'll be a relief to put a few decorative things down on paper for real. I find myself a little stressed about the possibility of changing my mind and about not really knowing what it's all going to look like right now. Maybe if I start narrowing the possibilities by making a few decisions it'll seem less overwhelming. Things have already taken shape in my mind, but making it all real makes me quite nervous. I only get to do this once - what if these ideas are crap and I could totally think of something better? That's when I have to keep reminding myself of the big picture. It's the most decisive, wonderful, special day of my life thus far - we're literally committing to one another FOR LIFE - and then we get to throw a giant party and celebrate all night. When you look at it like that, who gives a crap about menu cards or centerpieces? You know, I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that this is all stuff I've written before... hmm.

UGH. It's approximately 25 degrees in my bay here in the lab, so my fingers are shrunken and my ring which normally fits perfectly is spinning and spinning around my finger as I type and driving me NUTS. Haha - just a few short months ago this was a problem I was just DYING to have! Poor me with my beautiful engagement ring.

On tap for next week is a federal holiday with my sweetie on Monday, my birthday on Tuesday (though it's a work day), another work day on Wednesday, and then a trip to NYC for two interviews (Mount Sinai on Thursday, Columbia on Friday). For now, my love is off in Ocean City with his friends for the weekend, so I'm heading to my friend Tara's housewarming party in Alexandria tonight, and then out to Andy & Laura's in Frostburg tomorrow with Em & Josh for yet another housewarming party (plus lots of belly-rubbing with baby Cooke #2 on the way). Ben will be back on Sunday morning for our marriage class (isn't he a sweetheart) and then Rick and Annie, his brother and sister-in-law, will be visiting for the Ravens game & dinner. I love staying busy :)

really? REALLY?!?!

So I had quite a surreal experience at Hopkins yesterday! I really enjoyed the day, got to meet lots of students and ask lots of questions, and my interviews went amazingly well. It was not at all what I expected! I went into it knowing that I really loved UMD, so I was probably making unfair comparisons all day (for instance, UMD hospital is newer and prettier than most parts of Hopkins, but the long-standing tradition and reputation of Hopkins sorta precludes much "newness" - of course its buildings are old!). I left at the end of the day essentially feeling excited about my interviews, but a little indifferent about the school itself. Now I'm a little lost!

It started with an orientation from the asst dean of admissions, who was very nice, normal and conversational. Then we went to lunch, where we were split into tables that each had a student and a faculty member to chat with, which was nice. I got to ask lots of questions and get some real insight on what it's like to be there and to learn there. Then our student took us on a tour, all over the place (it's a rather LARGE campus). We didn't see any patient areas, which was disappointing, but I guess most hospitals look the same in that regard. We saw their brand new simulation center (with full-equipped operating rooms, emergency rooms, clinic rooms, and lots of simulator dummies of every age that they can essentially simulate any medical problem on, realistically). We watched part of a simulation that a group of ER clerkship students was doing, which was pretty cool. They were all laughing about how clueless and confused they were, as was their professor, as they tried to treat the patient and communicate with the fake operating room people who would be taking the patient next. It was pretty interesting! We also got to see their medical school building and classrooms, but they're building a brand new medical education building that will open in Fall '09 (when I would potentially be starting), so that was a little irrelevant to me I guess. I'm glad they're building a new one - the old one was a little, well, OLD. We got to see the historic part of the hospital also, which was cool. You can't help feeling different when you're there - there's just something about being at Hopkins. All the history, all the discoveries and leaps in science that have been made there, all the respect it commands all over the world... it's hard to describe how I felt, and how I sensed that everyone else felt, while I was there. I could even see it in the students. They weren't super-serious or full of themselves or anything, I think they just seemed aware of where they were, and of how important the place is, and of the advantage that it's going to give them. They were all very nice, normal people, laughing with each other about funny clinical experiences and asking us interviewees lots of questions about ourselves and being very engaged in conversation.

After the tour, we came back to the admissions waiting area where more students were waiting for us - some to interview us, some to hang out and chat with us while interviews were going on. My first interview was a student. She was very nice and we had a great conversation, but she also seemed very aware of the importance of what she was doing and how important this was to me. Which was nice, considering my last student interview experience was not so great (at Drexel, they had random volunteer students who interviewed us DURING lunch - as in answering questions between bites - and mine was a first year. Really, she'd been there about a month and a half, so how much information is she going to be able to give me, and how much insight does she have on what it takes to do well in medical school, that she should be evaluating me?!?! I was pissed.). But yeah, at Hopkins my student interviewer basically asked me all the questions I felt most comfortable answering (the ones that I've gotten many times and have prepared well for), so I think it went very well.

So this is where my day got crazy, and where the title of this post came from. My next interviewer was on older woman who had attended Hopkins herself and was a retired pediatrician working for the admissions committee. She was SO sweet - I could tell by the way she greeted me that it would be a comfortable interview. I didn't know it would be quite as comfortable as it was, though! She started by asking me about why I want to practice medicine (another question I'm very well rehearsed in answering), about my extra-curriculars and about my family - again, all things I'm very comfortable taking about. I got lots of opportunities to deliver my best lines. Then she asked if there was anything else I'd like to tell her to help her make her case to the rest of the committee, because she was very satisfied and impressed with my application and very excited to present me to the committee and she wanted to know anything and everything there was to know that might help her (at which point my jaw hit the floor). She even gave me her e-mail address in case I thought of anything else later! So I explained that I think that I am by temperament a particularly caring, compassionate, empathetic person, which is something that I think is unique among people that come from my research-heavy, scientific background. She agreed and said that came through beautifully in my application because I "write extremely well" and I described several situations that illustrated that. When she asked if I had any questions for her, we ended up in a conversation about how her career evolved and how she balanced work and family (she has 3 children), which was very encouraging for me since that's by far my biggest concern going forward with all this. She said she'd e-mail me a link to the blog of a colleague of hers at Hopkins who has young children now and talks about being a mom and a doctor. So sweet! She said it would be "easy" for me, because I'm "organized, aggressive, a leader not a follower" and that I'd do wonderfully. That conversation ended with her adding "If... well I won't say 'if', WHEN you get in, we can discuss these things further" (By this point, my jaw is completely detached and laying there on the desk in front of me). I left her office - after profusely thanking her for her compliments and her insights - wondering "really? did that really just happen?" sorta like I felt when I got the interview invitation in the first place - like I must have been dreaming.

I was expecting these interviews to be more intense, more scrutinizing, and more uncomfortable than anything I'd experienced so far, but I was obviously very pleasantly surprised! It was unreal! I found myself in the middle of the interview, before she got into telling me how enthused she was about my application, thinking about how important it was and how these moments were determining my future in SO many ways... and no sooner had I had those thoughts, then she completely threw me for a loop. Apparently I had already done what I needed to do. Looking back, working so hard for this really sucked, but I never thought it would actually be enough to get me here. Not that I'm in yet - I have a very enthusiastic advocate on the committee, but there are lots of other people that are just as qualified that the entire committee will have to choose between. But at least I know I have a legitimate shot at this. God is good, isn't He?!

As for my feelings about the school itself, I left yesterday still a little unsure of how I felt. I wasn't blown away but I didn't dislike it either - I was hoping to have strong feelings one way or the other. It's in a crappy part of the city, but then again most medical schools are - Maryland is in a nicer area but there are still not-so-nice streets nearby. It's VERY lecture-heavy, which one student actually did criticize - it doesn't seem like they care much about small group learning, which UMD puts more emphasis on (though I'm not sure if small-group learning would be best for me - I do tend to do well with lecture learning, but 5 to 8 hours of lecture a day seems a little daunting to me!). They calculate rent costs for your first year on a room in their residence hall which is about $450 a month, so the living expenses allowance for first year is quite low (much higher at UMD across all 4 years). That's essentially all borrowed money, so taking out less for living expenses is probably better in the long run, but if Ben and I need it to stay afloat, I'd like to have the option! So there are a few things that are holding me back from loving it. I just didn't feel as excited about Hopkins as I did about Maryland. It seems absurd to choose UMD over Hopkins if I were to get into both, but I don't know... it just might be better for me. It's going to be a really tough choice if I'm forced to make a choice. I'll be doing lots of praying.