The fall quarter had started, classes were back in session and campus was busy as ever. It was October 15th and a warm fall. I started the day with a coffee from espresso 22 as I had for most of my four years. It was difficult to focus knowing my destiny was waiting for me in my mailbox. I felt as if I was watching my day unfold from a movie theater seat; disconnected, yet my senses were hyper aware.
The test was over and life returned to normal. As normal as one could expect at the BCA internship. It was like a constant episode of Law and Order - I had the luck of working another crime scene; the pedophile case (see previous entries); and further research into mother’s that murder their babies. But time passed as I waited the sixty days for the test results. During that time I became very introspective. What was I waiting for? I’d come to realize that my future was resting on the results of the MCAT exam. If the test results were high I was going to be a doctor, if they were mediocre I wasn’t. This didn’t feel right, something was wrong with this picture. Shouldn’t I want it more? My parent’s coached me to retake the exam but it was too soon. It didn’t feel right, taking the test again, the challenge to regurgitate all of that knowledge - like throwing up a plate of spaghetti. With the additional studying and my test anxiety, it was all way too much.
It was time to face the facts, maybe medicine wasn’t right for me. Or, maybe it was my destiny and I was caught inside a raging river of confusion. I didn’t know what to do and trying to analyze it wasn’t going to give me the answers I needed to be sure. I felt like I was inside a hamster bubble racing down a hill. I was running so fast to keep up, to keep from falling. But there was no time to stop to check the street signs or look around at the houses or the trees.
My friend Mark was studying to enter the University of Minnesota Clinical Psychology program. We talked for hours about becoming doctors. I would become a psychiatrist and he was going to be a doctor of psychology. Together we would revolutionize the industry and focus on people and eliminate the dependence on pharmaceuticals. This dream was fading for me, but for him, he was at the crest of a great summit. .
I finished my coffee and I stepped across University Avenue towards Folwell Hall. Little did I know there was a greater plan unfolding. It started when I ran into Nancy an ex girlfriend. I almost didn’t recognize her for it had been three years since we stopped seeing each other. We hadn’t spoken in all of that time. We shared a short walk towards Northrup. We didn’t have the smoothest breakup and seeing her allowed for closure. She knew how important becoming a doctor was to me. Speaking to her was a little like going back in time, to the Pete three years previous.
I knew that my day was already estranged because it was day 60, but now it started molting into another animal. I walked past Northrup Hall and the great mall of the University of MN. The guardians had shed most of their leaves, they had witnessed hundreds of thousand of students who shared in their shade. They’d been there for Bob Dylan, the Viet Nam protests, the same giant’s that my parent’s sat under when they were just getting to know each other. My Grandfather W. Parham, who lead the organic chemistry department, his legacy a bond as deep as the roots of these old protectors. I pictured him smoking his corn pipe as I walked by Kholtoff Hall.
As I passed the library I bumped into Eric, he stood with his skateboard, looked no different than three years before. Eric and I endured Physics together, the daily ritual for 30 weeks. I had to laugh now at the second encounter, excited but apprehensive, something strange was happening. We reminisced on the days we shared in physics, and how his track to become a physiologist was progressing. I hadn’t seen him once, not even a glimpse or an echo. He seemed happy and excited about where he was and what he was doing. We departed, and he faded into the crowd of people. I knew that he became a memory, someone I wouldn’t ever see again, just like Nancy. It was okay, but strangely odd the universe was giving me the opportunity to say goodbye to people like pebbles in the same turgid river.
I finished my classes for the day and headed for home to my cat and my mailbox. It all felt comical, I wanted to write it down, no one would believe me, the day I received my test scores. I pulled the mail from the silver secured box in the lobby of the apartment complex. There it was thin like a debit card pin number. I sat down on the couch with my cat Nike procrastinating. I held the thin envelope in my hand and even tried to see my score through the envelope without opening it.
The truth was I was more afraid that the score was going to be good.
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