Rahl: This summer I'm doing research in heart failure and transplant, hopefully resulting in a peer-reviewed publication. The subject will likely be either (1) an assessment of the quality of care available in medical practice for patients with ventricular assist devices (VADs) or (2) a quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of BNP and NT-pro-BNP assays in the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure cases. After the summer, I'll be travelling around a lot, doing theater (either dramatic or technical, or both...haven't decided yet), and writing all I can. Hopefully I'll finish my novel. I also plan on catching up with all the books I missed reading over the past four years. I'd also like to find a charity clinic to volunteer in, maybe in a big city somewhere, and see if I'm qualified to help with any health care for homeless or underprivilaged families. I'd like to continue my work in Child Life and literacy tutoring. I also want to get back to sculpting and craftwork, as well as piano and guitar since I've had NO time to do any of that throughout college, and I miss it terribly. We'll see how much time I have.
During all this time, if you can believe it, I'll be applying to medical schools. Hopefully by this time next year, I'll have been accepted into at least one of them! Then it's off to med school, where I hope to study surgery (either cardiovascular or reconstructive with a specialty in hands).
Robyn: The AMCAS application actually only just went up today, and won't even be submitted to schools until August, no matter when I complete it this summer. So, I decided to focus on graduating with the highest GPA possible instead of worrying about trying to get that done too. Now that classes are over, the application gets a massive amount of attention!
Doc: Please don't worry about that. Medicine is one of those fields where you stay a student for the rest of your life. I think that was part of the appeal for me
Limo: I'm actually less of a party animal than most...I celebrated the end of my finals by first of all calling my mom. Then I cooked brunch for one of my friends who had to go to work right after our physiology final, and we had a picnic at her desk in the Art & Music Library. Later, I made dinner with my best friend and we watched an episode of Firefly (I just introduced her to the series), and then we met up with two more of my best friends to go see Hitchhiker's Guide (again ) I came back to find out that the folks I live with got me a huge orange and yellow stuffed fish as a graduation present, to add to my growing collection of huge, brightly-colored stuffed fish. I plan on reading myself to sleep tonight, with a book that has NOTHING TO DO WITH CLASSES!!! Pretty nice party, if you ask me!
(Oh, and my friends are throwing a cocktail party Thursday night, and my school sponsors Senior Week, which is just a large string of fun stuff to do (like amusement park visits, canoeing, and wine tours). I guess I'm good with the partying!)
Thanks again, everyone, for your interest and your good wishes!
[This message has been edited by Jeraliey (edited May 04, 2005).]
It sounds like you have a pretty full agenda, though I think you should go ahead and do all the things you won't have time for after you do get into med school.
You know, I was rather disappointed that no one caught that in "Quest for Survivor" Christine's nom de plume wrote all over your med school application.