Remembering...

This is David on the blog machine today...

This same week, two years ago, I graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and no plans for the future.  Yes, I had applied to several medical schools but the rejection letters were piling up.  I had all but given up on attending medical school in the fall.  If not medical school, what could I possibly due with myself?  I walked away from a career in finance to chase this crazy dream, committed two-and-a-half years to the obsession, while I watched the debt stockpile grow and the stable career slip away.  Was it possible that I had failed?  I graduated summa cum laude from college and scored in the top two-percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test.  I was destined for a top medical school, right? RIGHT?  Wrong.  My own state school with its lax admissions wouldn't even take me.  I watched and cried as classmates I tutored and mentored received their acceptance letters.

I was devastated.  How could I have sacrificed so much, worked so hard, invested so much of myself and failed so completely.  I don't think my days have ever been so dark and my nights so long as they were then.  My purpose, meaning and entire world view had been rocked to the very core.  I had nowhere to go from here.  I was stranded.

Well, this story has a happy ending, obviously.  I'm now in my second year at SLU School of Medicine.  It is abundantly clear now, that my "pre-med advisor" had written an unsavory "letter of recommendation."  Why?  I do not know.  She didn't even know me.  SLU accepted me because I carefully crafted my application to be free of the aforementioned letter.

Let me tell you the moral to the story  Yes, I worked very hard while I was a pre-med.  Very hard.  I made sure I had perfect grades and a covetous MCAT score, but it wasn't enough.  I'm not being cynical when I say that sometimes it doesn't matter how hard you work in life. Sometimes you have to play the game.  You have to use your head.  Know the right people and work the right angles.  Work smarter, not harder.  It makes me feel all dirty inside saying these things because it is completely contrary to my independent, diligent, self-help philosophy, but I'm afraid it's absolutely true.

Sometimes, you just have to play the game

David