Applications and LOR: Bite Me

Dear God this whole med-school application thing is ridiculous. You would think that you were signing up to enter some institution that would require hundreds of hours of your time, and mold you from an otherwise normal human being into some sort of know-it-all professional who others entrust with their lives or something. All joking aside, the application is a rather monumental task. Now that I'm finished entering all the information in the world about myself, and every class that I ever took, the name, the units, and the grade received, I now have to come up with the greatest personal statement ever; something that will make the readers wet themselves with joy or something, and make them say, "My God, this guy absolutely MUST be allowed to digitally probe my rectum some day!!! For my health, of course..."

And in the background of all this are the coveted Letters of Recommendation; where my professors and mentors are supposed to get all teary eyed and talk about how they would love to have me as their doctor. But before they can do that, I have to contact them. And it's the most awkward thing ever.

Dear Dr. Guy,

Remember all those times I came to your office hours to come talk to you? Yeah, I kept you company back then, and now it's time for you to own up to your end of the unwritten bargain; I need you to write me a totally badass letter that will undoubtedly get me into the greatest med-schools ever. I want your letter to have AdComms dueling to the death over me.

Kthnxbye,

Angry Frenchy

So yeah, that's basically how the LOR go. So far, I've lined up multiple people that I will send off similar emails to, and hopefully they'll respond positively to me (I haven't really stepped on anyone's toes, so I don't see why they wouldn't), and write me some awesome letters. And the awesome letters, in return, will get me into some awesome schools.

So that brings us back to the Personal Statement. Basically, in this essay, I've got to exploit the crap out of my younger brother's illness, and make it appear as if it almost killed him, and then talk about how I became a better, and wiser person as a result of it. And, as a result of it, decided I can only be a doctor now. Since I really have no "real" hardships of my own (though I'm sure they'd love to hear about my current situation with "Sandy" and Dickus Minimus), I have to exploit the hardship of someone else. Because you can't be a doctor unless you exploit someone else's suffering for personal gain. That's the rule. Me talking about what I learned in life and through college would be boring to AdComms, who'd probably use my PS as toilet paper. But when someone is suffering in it, and I'm making it sound totally interesting, they'll love me.

Such is the world, and such is life. I guess.