Post-application: the view from the other side

As you'll know if you've been reading my blog, or have applied to/ know someone who has applied to medicine yourself, almost a month has passed since the application deadline. Now being me, I typically left this until the day of the deadline, to give myself enough time to master that personal statement, which in all honesty was one of the most challenging parts of my entire application. I found it so difficult to fit in everything I'd done into 4000 characters, and I failed at this in that I had to sacrifice writing about some of my less relevant experiences in favour of the more clinically related ones. 

Anyway what have I been doing since then? Well I've started to progress on my final year project, experimenting and writing some of the all important literature review. As much as I love my university, access to some of the papers I've wanted has been somewhat challenging to say the least! I'm producing a drug-eluting stent, for use in coronary arteries in patients presenting with atherosclerosis. This is an exciting area of research, and due to my love for all things cardiovascular, I'm actually really looking forward to progressing it. With it also being something that hasn't been done before at the university, it'll be great to see how far we can get. I've been progressing through third year. There's a lot more work this year, and it's involving significantly more library time, but I feel relatively on top of everything, which is nice! Hopefully this will minimise the whole 'going crazy at exam time' thing.

I'm also continuing volunteering, which has been enjoyable. In my role at the family centre, I'm gaining more responsibility, which is really helping to develop my confidence, so I feel pretty great in that aspect also. Getting back into the society at uni is really making me feel like I have more of a purpose for this year, and I intend to make the most out of my final year here. 

In terms of my application, I've not been quite as cool as I would have hoped. Its because of the amount I want it, but as not to set myself up for disappointment, I emotionally readied myself for 4 straight rejections without interview, this hasn't stopped me panicking slightly every time I get an email on a weekday (I get the notifications on my phone as well, it's been pretty rough!) in case it's a reply from a university, or an update from track. And this had been entirely unnecessary, until today when I actually got my first reply. 

A month of waiting, feeling apprehensive and hoping, the first university that got back to me offered me an interview. 

Now this is amazing! It's such an honour to even be shortlisted down from so many people, and it makes medical school feel more like a reality. It means that a medical school has liked my application enough to consider me for a place. I know that this could lead to nothing, but even to get this far is motivation enough to really put my all in, not only my preparations for this interview, but also in terms of my course. 

Wish me luck!

XOX