What's Coming in the Next Year?

For those of you not familiar with the whole med school path, my next year will be insane. In July, I officially have to decide what I want to be when I grow up, and start applying to residency programs. Between now and then, I have to figure out which programs I want to apply to, sign up for audition rotations (I'm currently waiting to hear back from one), and take my Step 2 PE boards. This means on June 3rd, I will be in Philadelphia seeing 10 fake patients, examining them and then writing up a note. I'm not too worried about this test, but it was $1100 so I will be taking it seriously. Alright, so these audition rotations- basically it's my time to kiss ass and be a rockstar med student so that the programs realize how amazing I am and they want me to be a part of their program. I'm hoping to do 4 audition rotations...one at the end of 3rd year and three of them in the beginning of my 4th year. Ok, after I apply to all these rotations, I can be invited for an interview. So I will spend my fall flying around the country doing interviews. I'm hoping to stay in Ohio, so that wouldn't be too bad because I could drive to all the places. Just for example, I know a girl who is one year ahead of me and is going into OB/GYN...she has gone to 20 interviews this fall.....think of all those plane tickets and hotel rooms. $$$$$$$$$$$

I'm in a DO school. There is a DO match and an MD match. I can do either just one or both...I'm still deciding what to do. Anyways, if I do the DO match, next January I will rank all the programs I'm interested in. At the same time, all the programs rank the students. This company, figures out all the rankings and then does the Match. I will get a little note in February saying where I will be doing my residency (hopefully). If I don't match, then I would do something awful called the Scramble. I'm not even going to explain what it is because it's pretty much my biggest fear.

So yeah, 2010 should be super busy and expensive.

Oh yeah, we're hoping to go to Korea in June. Jake will hopefully be presenting at a conference in Seoul which means his trip would be paid for, meaning all we have to do is swing my way. We won't know until February or March though.