Nothing keeps me busier than when these four kiddos come to visit! The highlights of their days include Magic School Bus, fish sticks, swimming pools, playing the floor is lava, and anytime a slushy is involved. The highlight of my day is “quiet rest time” when they don’t have to nap but they have to sit still. They do funny things to get around it, like crawling very very slowly, playing “very still” tag- which turns out to be not very still at all, and repeating everything one of them says until that one person is crying. I also like helping them with their summer math and reading practice more than all of them like school combined.
I was always much more into school than they are. Maybe because having three other siblings that close in age is more fun than anything school has to offer. I’d probably be the same way if I had had several roommates to play with. It’s a good thing that they are staying juvenile as long as possible. When I was the twins’ age, (8) I feel like I was pretty self-sufficient. I could make my favorite meal by myself, stay home by myself, and bathe myself. I want them to stay young as long as possible. Though, I do admit being an adult is a lot better. Being as independent as I was, I got frustrated a lot when I got to preteens and teen years and people were still telling me when to go to bed, and how much I could eat. With these kids though, they would eat nachos til they puke, not bathe for 6 weeks and watch TV until their eyes bleed, so I’m glad they still depend on us to take care of them.
With the kids come new germs my body is unfamiliar with so I have the beginnings of an upper respiratory infection. It always comes on the same. I wake up with a sore neck in the back, sore lymph nodes beneath my jaw and a painful throat with no cough. The second day I get an even worse sore throat, a puffy face, and a nice stream of mucus down the back of my throat that makes me not hungry and feel like I could gag at any minute.
I usually nurse one dose of Dayquil liquid for about ten minutes every 8 hours. It tastes terrible but its good at coating my throat.
Despite the oncoming full-blown infection, I went out last night to meet some future medical schools classmates. We were going to go to a minor league baseball game, but it got rained out. Instead, we watched the Thunder game at a sports bar called Leon’s. It was super loud whenever Thunder swished it, which I thought was cool. I went even though I didn’t know anyone else there. Everyone was super chill, friendly, and funny. Several guys brought their wives or girlfriends, which I thought was cool. You get to know more about people on a deeper level that way.
We met up through a Facebook group, so the joke of the evening centered around a guy on Facebook who couldn’t find where we were sitting. One guy went around the bar trying to find “Matt” who none of us knew. He asked a bunch of strangers and people that looked alone or lost. It kept getting funnier because people were walking around and people kept yelling “Are you Matt?” One person held up Matt’s Facebook profile picture and yelled, “If this is your picture, sit down!” I thought it was hilarious.
Some second years asked if I was excited to start with a skeptical look on their face. I told them I knew it was going to get scary really fast but that I really was ready to meet everyone and see what its like. I do still want my FULL summer first, though!
We also talked about where we were when we got “the call”. I think its something that everyone remembers. One guy said he was at work at a clinic and his boss was a doctor so he let him answer let him leave early too. Mine was during class. I stepped out for a minute and called OSU back after I got the missed call. Unable to stop smiling or silently shrieking, I ran back into class and yelled to everyone that I just got into medical school. It was a good moment.
Speaking of getting into medical school. I got an email this morning that I have made it off of the wait list into OU med. It was surprisingly uneventful. Having already made so many plans at OSU, I entertained the idea of actually going to OU for about 3 minutes total, (but man those mods are nice). I’m happy and proud that a great school like that would offer me a spot, but ultimately it came down to a technicality.
Getting an interview somewhere means you are qualified to go to the school. Getting on the wait list means that your arbitrary “score” with the interview considered wasn’t high enough to get an outright offer of admission. Basically it means that you didn’t completely blow your interview, but they aren’t ready to let you in in case they can get someone “better” in their sense of the word.
Getting off the wait list just means that enough of their “preferred” people have accepted offers elsewhere, so they’ll “allow” me in more or less.
It was different for me at OSU. I felt valued as an applicant from the moment I started dealing with OSU. Like they were saying “Thank you for considering us,” to me. And when I was wait listed, I still got a personal phone call and was welcomed to send them updates on what I was doing. Then, I found out that like dating- OSU wanted me to want them too. (My physician mentor that’s an OSU alum looked at my file, saying that I applied to OU. Since they figured I would get in there too and pick there, they didn’t make me an immediate offer.) So I sent in a “letter of intent”, and a week later I got in.
It’s a shame that something this important to my life comes down to games like this that both OU and OSU play. But that’s the way it goes.
Maybe I’m too prideful to accept the offer from OU when I seemed to be a second rate choice. Regardless of the reason at the heart of it, I know I’d have a good time suffering for four years at either school. Like so many other things in life, it comes down to it being what you make of it. I’m sticking with OSU, though, because it already feels like home.