Monday, January 31, 2011

I dream of Dio




I am a sad sad man.

When I was a kid, I would have these crazy awesome dreams. Dragons, flying, lances, adventures, basically a Ronnie James Dio song (RIP you golden, golden god). Sometimes I still have cool dreams - I recently had a flying dream where I had to really work to stay afloat. It's all core strength - the moment you lose tension, you're down baby!

Anyways, last night, I actually dreamed about having a med school interview. Which is sad. I even remember answering the "Why do you want to be a doctor" question. I had a really good answer, I think, but I don't remember it now, which is too bad. If I could just get all my interview practice while I sleep, that would be bomb.

Of course then I'd probably show up at the actual interview:

Them: "So why do you want to be a doctor, son?" (In my mind, they are all kindly old southern gentlemen who call me son)

Me: "So that I can slay the dragon with my hypodermic needle of doom!

Them: "Good good, and what would you say is your biggest weakness?"

Me: "I have no weakness fool! Bow before Zod!"

Them: "OK great. Can you tell me about a time when you overcame a challenge?"

Me: "I need to poop, right now. Scuse me"

Them: "Oh no problem, we'll wait."



To put this in perspective, and to give you a little background on Axl Rose (I sometimes refer to myself in the third person, cause I got it like that), I have actually been to 3 med school interviews before, so I have a sense for what the questions are like. Usually the interviewers in my dream ask pretty accurate questions...

My interviews went well last time (2009), but I ended up on 2 waitlists and 1 "conditional acceptance" at a school that shall go unnamed. Suffice it to say, I did not meet the conditions of acceptance, which was unfortunate. No, I do not have a criminal record, no I am not a drug addict. It's a long story for another time. Mostly, my GPA sucks. But that was not the condition for acceptance...

I need to poop, right now.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

My crazy-ass, bacchanalian saturday night party-fest

It's time to party, Let's party!!
Hang out with yourself and have a crazy party
Hey you, let's party
Have a killer party and Party!

Its almost midnight on a Saturday, and I'm shWASTED!!!!

Wasted on knowledge, that is! That's right, I just spent my saturday night studying the integument and histology of connective and epithelial tissues. Just in time to go to sleep so that I wan wake up and study for the MCAT.

My life is such a party. It's funny how different my Saturday nights are now than they were in college... Ah me. College. A typical saturday night in college ended with me passed out with a nerf dart stuck to my face, sleeping on a pile of unopened juice bottles stolen from a vending machine downstairs.

My top 5 greatest Saturday night moments in college:

5) Climbing the 15-foot polar bear statue at my alma mater at 1am. In the winter. In a state that has a polar bear for a mascot.

4) Taking photos of my roommate who actually managed not only to scale the icy 15-foot polar bear statue but to also maneuver himself on to it's head so as to make it seem that the bear was doing my friend a very special favor.

3) Waking up with Ramen all down my self on a couch on Sunday morning. Frikkin class right there.

2) Completing a self-made treasure hunt (which was still surprisingly hard) with my 3 roomates, the four of us in green face paint and wearing ninja turtle outfits made for 5-year olds. Hilarious. Priceless. On DVD.

1) Oh lord, I dont even know. Peeing on a dumpster? Being duct-taped in to a cold-ass shower with my Polish roommate? Winning a milk-and-OJ-chugging bet with a friend which then required him to fellatio a banana in the dining hall while yelling a particularly hilarious admission to the audience?


So many things to be proud of... And that all is why I am studying for the MCAT instead of studying for my Step 1s! But you know, honestly, I don't know that I would trade it all just to be in med school sooner. You can't buy memories like those. I chose the long way 'round, but I'll get there in the end. I have a plan, and it's unfolding nicely :)

Friday, January 28, 2011

♪♪I'm goin off the rai-els on a crazy train!!♪♪



It's Friday woot!! Its been a crazy week. So I am reapplying to med school this summer. To get in, there's a few areas that I need to improve, including my GPA, my MCAT score, and my extracurriculars.

So...everything.

To that end, I have been burning the candles at both ends. I am a lab rat by day, masked crusader by night, hospital volunteer by Wednesday afternoon, MCAT student by night, soccer coach by weekend (in the spring), anatomy student by Thursday morning, and sleeper by night.

And then there's this:


Except in my case, replace Twitter with cruising for flame wars on SDN, and replace facebook with anything but facebook. I really hate facebook... so many people that I just never want to hear from and don't care about. I'm always ABOUT to quit it, and then instead I just whine about it on my blog and come back to it. I just can't quit you baby. I love to hate you.

Anyways, life is tough right about now, but it all comes to a head on April 9th - the day of the MCAT. After that, life shifts down a gear. Till then, it's "every-man-hold-on-to-your-testicles-cause-this-crazy-train-is-goin-balls-to-the-walls" gear...

Thursday, January 27, 2011

By Hook or by Crook


Thus begins the long and illustrious career of god's gift to physicians.

Either that, or its just another chapter in a ridiculous and strange life, the more interesting parts of which I will perhaps reveal as appropriate anecdotes come to mind.

My name is Axl Rose. Or it would be if I had had a chance to name myself at my own birth. The reason I would have chosen that name is that I love Guns N Roses. I am a big metal head... The reason I spell it like that is because I got it like that.

A couple years ago, I decided that I wanted to become a doctor. As of today, I have applied once previously with mixed results. Ultimately, obviously, I didn't end up going to med school, as evidenced by the fact that...


I'm sitting in a cafe studying for the goddam MCAT again. Its the worst most brutal test I have ever had the privilege of studying for. I am planning to apply again this summer, 2011. I'll chronicle my journey to the best of my ability; perhaps it will make you laugh, perhaps you'll find it informative, and maybe it will be of some use to people like me.

And by people like me, I mean people who have pretty bad grades from undergrad, are slightly older than the average applicant (25 years young), and mired balls-deep in a variety of debt... with a currently overdrawn bank account... due to my ravenous appetite for destruction and gambling.

Well actually not gambling. Just destruction.

This is my story.