I'm Going to Med School!

I was digging through a box of old assignments the other day and I found a paper I had written during the first semester of my freshman year of college, way back in the days of the Y2K scare. Amidst memories of midnight runs to Denny's and enduring sub-zero temperatures of football games with a big "Y" painted on my bare chest to show my school spirit, I found a worksheet that caught my attention. I contained my responses to questions my English 200 teacher had posed to us new freshmen. One question in particular jumped out at me. He had asked, "Why did you choose to come to BYU?" I had written something to the effect that I chose BYU because they had a good biochemistry program and that chicks dig biochemistry majors. Of more interest and slightly more intellectual substance, I had continued by saying that I had the goal of someday going to medical school and that BYU had a good track record of helping undergraduates get accepted. I reflected on the feelings I had had seven long years ago when I wrote that response. That was the beginning of the daunting journey of chasing my dream to work in the field of medicine.



(I know what you're thinking...."A lot of people go to college for seven years... yeah, they're called DOCTORS...")



I am the first member of my family to go into health care. My grandpa, great-grandpa, and great-great grandpa were home-steadin', dirt-diggin', snot rocket blowin' potato farmers in Southern Idaho. My Dad was part of the first generation "off the farm", and started his career in grounds supervising and landscaping before finishing his bachelors degree. Going to medical school seemed to me like a break from a long and proud tradition of manual labor. Acceptance to medical school always seemed like a nebulous, impossible feat. It was my pie-in-the-sky goal. I halfway believed that the only way I could get in would be to bribe, trick, or slander an admissions committee into letting me in, just to see what happens.



This past week I finally achieved my goal. I got the email I had always dreamed of getting, a letter from THE Ohio State University College of Medicine advising me that I had been accepted to their program. I was ecstatic. It is interesting to finally achieve a long standing goal. The deep sense of fulfillment is real and irreplaceable. I have been reveling in my excitement ever since. I would rank it up there with finishing the Boston Marathon, having a paper published, and traveling abroad for the first time. So six months from now when I am completely stressed out and overwhelmed by having to distinguish the sphinoid from the ethmoid, I will look back on this week and remember, "Justin, this is what you want". And it still will be true.