What to expect when you're pre-med-ing

It has recently come to my attention that I will be starting med school very, very soon.  As of this writing, my fancy new countdown clock reads 56 days and change.  I must admit to conflicted feelings:

1)  Unbridled, Barely-contained, Pants-wetting Excitement
Oh the places I'll go!  Money! Power! Chicks!  The world is my oyster!  Do I want to be a pediatric onco-plastic-neurosurgeon?  Or perhaps I'll settle for spinal trauma surgery?  There's always cardioelectrophysiology if I need a back-up plan!  Either way, I'll make a million dollars a year and buy a sick fleet of jet-black Ferraris, fuck yeah!  And I'll hire a team of race-car drivers to drive them, we'll race through Santa Monica every morning, and I'll beat them all right before I hit the golf course every afternoon.  Life is going to be saaaa-weeet!

2)  Untamed, All-consuming, Pants-wetting Terror
Oh. My. Shitballs.  What have I done. Lateral wha? Medullary reticulo-spinal who?  Loracarbef, imipenem, and penetrex?  More like Lookimabarf, Imapeemyself, and...penetrex.  Who comes up with this shit?  My girlfriend is studying for her first year final exams, and she literally had to memorize a random list of about 400 bacteria, antibiotics, fungi, and other stuff, and everything about all that stuff.  The spreadsheet literally looked like Dr. Seuss shat a gleeful rainbow turd in every cell.  Furazolidone?  Fookayouzidone!  I quizzed her, and, literally, I couldn't figure out how to even say 80% of the words I was reading, let alone understanding them.  What. Have. I. Done.  It's ok, maybe everybody else will be stupider than me, and they can't fail the whole class right?  Right!?!?  (As a side note, my gf actually knew the spreadsheet pretty cold... so either she's sick at med school, or the average med student is capable of learning this stuff...)

3)  Unreasonable Hope

Maybe I'll be a natural, and it will all come easy to me!  Perhaps I can develop photographic memory so that when they throw a phone book at me and tell me to learn it, I wont crap myself.  Or maybe I should start building one of those memory palaces where I can store away all those nuggets of knowledge in the nooks and crannies of my mind.  Of course, when I try to build my memory palace, I instead imagine a mammary palace, and the whole pursuit gets entirely sidetracked... heh heh... my boob scepter will have a nipple on top... my throne will be made of...boobs.


4)  Somewhat Ambiguous Mania
It's OK!  It'll all be OK!  I can do it!  It's going to be great! Fun times!  Don't even think about it!  One step at a time! Baby steps!  I'ma rock it for sure maybe!  I know I'm cut out for this!  Or I'm not but that's OK too I'll just cut my self out for it!  Yay go team!
And the worst is when someone asks me if I'm "excited", and I'm like "Yeah of course duh!" but inside I'm like "Uhhh...ihavenofuckingideawhatishappeningIguessit'llbecoolmaybesure".

 5) Empty-headed, Slack-jawed Resignation
 At some point, you come to the realization that, hey, I have no idea what the future holds, but I'm on this train, and I'm gonna ride this bitch wherever it'll take me.  And that's that.