slow wave sleep

Hallo! Ich heiße Zai. Ich komme aus Irak aber wohne ich in Amerika.

so i’m not sure if you’ve all noticed but it’s september i.e. too late to send in your amcas application and apply to MD schools but your local trooper is out here doing just that. and in addition to doing just that i got into a big fight with my parents because of it because applying this late is such a risk and i’m seriously doing this whole application business wrong. nobody waits until the last minute (i.e. now) to submit their application. nobody waits this long to get their shit done. i sure as hell was not planning to apply this year, i didn’t want to. i thought it would be nice to take the year off and figure my life out, give myself a breather but my parents don’t want that.

so just like the title says, i got a 500 on the mcat. i took the exam on 6/29/2017, then hopped on a plane to the middle east without ever thinking about it again until the results day came. it goes without saying that i was disappointed with my score because i did spend time and effort into preparing for this exam (of course i could have worked harder and have since learned my lesson). for a few days after receiving my score, i had somewhat of a mental breakdown (and a panic attack on the plane back to los angeles) about what to do next. what could i do next? was i a failure? what if i’m not destined to go to med school?

all these thoughts tend to clutter your brain when you’ve been slapped with a score like that and the negativity really got to me. i’m really not the person that exudes confidence so being as rattled as i was, i thought that maybe i should put off applying this cycle and maybe retaking. i was very much set on not submitting an application because 1) it was already august and i didn’t have anything written personal statement-wise and 2) my score sucked ass. it would literally knock out any confidence that i had left if i got rejected, and i wasn’t really ready to take a risk when the odds seemed so against me.

naturally, like all parents, my parents thought that i still had a shot (because parents are very much hopeful about these sorts of things). yeah, of course i have a chance, everybody has a chance. but it’s like the lottery, you go in with a certain percent of risk and depending on how great your numbers are, you could potentially hit the jackpot. so in part to shut them up and in part to test my luck, i thought maybe i could give myself a try and go out on a limb. i still gave myself a safety net in case i did get rejected and that was limiting myself to only 6 six schools. i didn’t want to apply broadly because then if i did get rejected, i’d have to be a reapplicant and well, that may look ugly on my applications. prior to this decision, i looked up threads of people who had similar scores as me, and read their stories about how they’d been accepted. i’m not sure if i will be as impressive of an applicant as they are but i’ll definitely try and express my desire to pursue medicine.

i'm not sure if anybody will read this in the future, or now, but if you are reading this after having received your score and feel subpar, please don’t lose hope! a score on some exam does not define who you are. don’t compare yourself to the other people who you think are more “awesome” or “smarter” than you are. you aren’t stupid and there’s definitely nothing wrong with you, and never doubt your own abilities.