Haunting or Hilarious

I almost laughed out loud walking home from the hospital this afternoon.

The application process for medical school is not like any other graduate school application process. First, it takes more than a tanking economy for someone to decide to apply. Second, it involves more than a purchase of a Kaplan review book, some letters of recommendation, and a $200 exam. It is more like an application for the FBI or CIA; I confess that I have never applied for a job with the CIA or with the FBI and therefore have no idea what the application process looks like; but if I could imagine, dream, postulate on the details, I would say there is a lot of screening, a lot of interviewing, a lot of intimidating going on. If this is true, than my experience of applying to become a doctor was indeed very much like applying to work as an FBI agent.

I was interviewed fifteen times, including the two at BYU used to judge if I was suitable to even apply to medical school, at seven different schools throughout the application process. As far as the screening goes, I wrote essays on every ethical issue under the sun, wrote a 3,000 word personal biography, and did an interpretive tap dance of photosynthesis for one particularly demanding dean of admissions. That is just the direct screening. There was plenty of non-direct screening and intimidating to pass around. Every time I told anyone I was interested in medicine, and by anyone, I mean anyone not enrolled in an undergraduate institution, their face would contort into this marquee flashing messages like "You are crazy!","You are evil","You have no idea..." and so forth. Truthfully though, none of that amounted to much in my head.

One of the things that actually did concern me about the decision to be a doctor was whether I could handle the anatomy lab. I heard that students dissected their way entirely through a human cadaver. I confirmed this at one of my interviews when the student giving me a tour unexpectedly pulled back the sheet over his cadaver, mid-sentence! It was every bit repulsive as I imagined.

So I almost laughed out loud as I walked home from the hospital this afternoon smiling at everyone and everything I passed, thinking about how awesome the dissection of the pelvis (yes, that required us to split the pelvis with a handsaw and dissect the leg with a scalpel) was that I just did, and how much I LOVE the anatomy lab, and comparing that with my pre-med concern. The contrast nearly put me in stitches.