I’m going to take my talents to South Carolina

Eight months ago, I spent weeks editing and re-editing my med school personal statement, and days filling out the endless AMCAS forms. When I finally finished on June 3rd and hit submit, I felt a huge sense of relief. 

It turned out I was far from the end. That day was followed by a good two months of chiseling away at secondary applications, then about five months of flying across the country to interview at various schools, and then a month of obsessively checking my email and praying for an acceptance somewhere. 

Whenever I met other people along the interview trail, or I talked to my friends also applying this year, we’d complain about how the process was draining our relationships, sapping our sanity, and chopping years off our life. It’s not any one day or one moment that’s especially hard, like taking exams, but it’s a drawn out process with a lot of helplessness and a whole lot of waiting. 

But the other week, I finally reached an end when I was accepted at two schools. I was accepted to an MD/PhD program at St. Louis University, and the Medical University of South Carolina. 

Sidenote - How MD/PhD programs works: 

2 years of medical school in a classroom 

2 – 5 years of working in a lab and writing a PhD thesis 

2 years of medical school in a hospital 

It's a total of 6 to 9 years, but the program has free tuition and a living stipend, so it’s a great deal. 

Sidenote within a sidenote - My theory is that biomedical research will be a different landscape in twenty years or so. As we move towards more emphasis on the clinical relevance of basic science research, MD/PhD’s will be far outcompeting PhD’s for jobs. 

Anyways, I decided to take my talents to the Medical University of South Carolina for several reasons. For one, I liked it enough to write a three-part post about it: 

Part 1: Forever 21

Part 2: Black Suits Coming

Part 3: Reflections   

Most importantly, it’s been one of my long standing dreams to live near the beach, and somewhere I could wear shorts and flip flops all year. 

Sidenote - It's one of my theories that everyone has an ideal self they imagine themself as.  Say a brilliant undiscovered writer, or a hardcore cyclist.  In reality, people are nowhere close to these ideal selves.  This doesn't stop me from maintaining that my ideal self would be some hybrid of Chris Paul/Jack Johnson/Paul Farmer/Bill Simmons. 

In addition, MUSC felt like an academic environment that would help me succeed. I’ve endlessly debated the merits of a cutthroat environment like a Harvard against a supportive student-oriented world like a Kenyon [here's a post: "Which pond?"]. 

But as usual, the decision was made for me, and I got into two schools I considered on the supportive/student-oriented end of the spectrum. My competitive side still wants to tangle with the students at the Harvard’s of the world, but maybe the cards aren’t quite in place for me yet. 

So anyways, my wife and I will be launching are life together for the next six to nine years in Charleston, South Carolina.  Hopefully we'll come out with more kids than debt. 

See you on the other side, 

from ken  

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.