Just as I was wrapping up my day in the lab a few weeks ago, a vision of untold beauty greeted me in my inbox. 

My first interview of this cycle (from a top 25 school no less)! It seemed my luck was improving.  I scheduled the interview and waited impatiently for the day to come.

The day before the interview I drove from Athens to Birmingham. Despite almost falling asleep on the road, thinking my car was about to lose a wheel (nothing was wrong with the Prius, it was the poor quality of a certain stretch of I-20), and having my credit card rejected at a gas station, the trip wasn’t too bad.  I checked into my hotel to find that I had a gigantic room. It was really two rooms: a lounge area with a bar, a desk, a couch and a big screen TV, and a bedroom with 2 queen size beds. (Do I need two queen sized beds, you ask? Absolutely not, but it’s what they gave me, and it was awesome.)

After getting a meal at an Indian restaurant by the UAB hospital, I holed up in my palatial room to go over my applications and look at some questions previously asked at UAB interviews (Thanks studentdoctor.net!).  It was a night full of coffee, college basketball, and nerves. For those of you who don’t know, I can be a bit of a worrier, so my nerves weren’t helped by the fact that it took me until 9 o’clock to realize that I was in a different time zone (awesome in that I gained an hour, but very worrisome as I wondered what other obvious piece of information I could have missed). Eventually I made it to bed, imagining everything that could go wrong the next day.

The Back-Story (Part 2)

Once I graduated, I took the obvious first step to begin my reapplication and went to Japan.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t logical or helpful, but it was a great way to clear my head and see a whole new part of the world. (I’ll probably talk about Japan later, in a series of posts tentatively named “Formative Events” (aka an excuse to talk about some amusing events from the past).)

I had already lined up a job for the next year, so, on my return to the states, I targeted what I thought was my weakest point: shadowing. I was given a small hint as to my weakness from the one interview I got the first time around. It went something like this:

Interviewer: So I see you don’t have much shadowing experience.

Me: Yes, but, I’ve talked to many doctors and done my research over the years, so I’m sure I want to go into medicine.

Interviewer: But how do you know unless you shadow?

Me: I have the ability to make an informed decision?

Interviewer: Okay, moving on. How much do you think your lack of shadowing will affect your application?

Me: I’m going to guess, “a lot?”

Interviewer: Okay. And, do you think that you’re ready to be a physician in light of the fact that you haven’t shadowed?

Me: Can we talk about something else now?

Therefore, I shadowed a few night shifts in the ER and spent a few days with an orthopedic surgeon. I can’t legally tell you exactly what I saw during those sessions, but suffice it to say that I saw a little bit of everything in the ER and a lot of nothing with the orthopedic surgeon.

Soon I began working as a laboratory technician in the lab that I had done research for during my undergrad years. My lab work has the distinction of being the only other thing talked about in my interview, and somehow, what should have been a positive conversation was twisted into a gut wrenching game of “phrase it the way I want it or you clearly don’t understand,” which sapped me of any confidence I had left after our shadowing discussion.

Interviewer: So tell me about your research.

Me: We are studying the host cell response to influenza. We have been screening the human genome using siRNAs to knockdown gene products in order to see the effect on influenza replication.

Interviewer: So what’s the goal of your project?

Me: We are hoping to find genes necessary for virus replication, which could lead to novel treatment strategies for the virus.

Interviewer: But what is the simple result you want to come from your work?

Me: … to find novel treatments for influenza infection?

Interviewer: But, if you were just talking to someone who doesn’t do research, what would you tell them you’re trying to do?

Me: ... come up with new ways to treat the flu?

Interviewer: No, as simply as you can, what is your research aimed at?

Me: … Keegan make people better?

Interviewer: Okay, I just wanted to make sure you knew why you were doing your research.

Since beginning to work full time, I have submitted my AMCAS and secondary applications. I have also been volunteering at Athens Animal Control and Butterfly Dreams Farms, and I am once again waiting on interviews.

(Disclaimer: Conversations may be slightly embellished, but I assure you that the general feeling remains.)

The Back-Story (Part 1)

During your senior year, all students intending to apply to med schools have to meet with the pre-med advisor so he can write a recommendation for you and offer guidance on your quest. I arrived at my meeting slightly early, and just as I sat down the advisor came out and ushered me in to his office. He looked at my file for a second and then asked:

So, if you got a 35 on the MCAT, where would you go?

Me: (After pausing to see if he was joking) I did get a 35 on the MCAT.

Advisor: No, I’m just asking if you did, where would you go?

Me: Ummm, no. I already took the MCAT, and I did get a 35.

Advisor: … Oh. Okay. Well, everything else looks good, so you can go just about anywhere you want.

The advisor and I chatted for a little longer and then he sent me on my way. It was great, the world was my oyster. I would be accepted to med schools in no time. Applications were a mere formality at this point.

I applied to a slew of top ranked schools and sat back to watch the acceptances roll in. The secondaries came, I filled them out, and waited for my interviews. And I waited. And then I waited some more. And finally, as I was beginning to panic, I received a phone call inviting me to an interview. It didn’t come from my first choice of school, but I was on the board now. I was back in the game. I was still going to dominate this whole process. Surely the other schools would recognize my obvious greatness and clear aptitude for med school.

No other interview invitations came, and I was placed on the wait-list at the one school that did interview me.

You should know that I have long held a suspicion that I have some horrible learning disability rendering me functionally incapable which no one has had the heart to tell me about.

The profound lack of response to my application to medical schools exacerbated my fear immensely. As I searched for the reason behind the lack of interest, my mind ran wild.

My advisor said I would be competitive everywhere. What happened? Did they learn about my disability? I always knew I wasn’t actually smart. Oh God, what’s wrong with me? Am I going to end up on the streets because nobody wants the burden of taking care of me with my condition which has rendered me unable to function in society?

At some point I figured that, in order to keep such a huge secret from me, my life would have to be either 1) a Truman Show-like farce or 2) a hallucination I have been having while legitimately disabled. 1 seems highly unlikely, and, if it’s 2 (also probably very unlikely), I almost certainly don’t have that much control and nothing really matters anyway.

I still knew I wanted to be a doctor, so I gathered myself together and began to prepare to reapply.

The Process

I’m sure many of you are blessed to not have the desire to become a doctor and therefore don’t know what the application process is like. Here is a look at what goes on:

After you take the MCAT, pass all of those classes med schools like, and convince a few professors that they actually remember you and should write a recommendation for you, you have to fill out the AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service) application. The vast majority of US med schools use this service and it seems like a great idea. The application is pretty involved, but you only have to answer one long essay question (Why do you want to be a doctor?) and they send your application and letters of recommendation to every school you indicate for a nominal fee (read hundreds and hundreds of dollars). And, that’s that.

Only that’s not that. Med schools then receive your application and decide to send you a secondary application. It used to be that med schools would weed out some applicants between the AMCAS application and the secondary, but I’m fairly certain that now the majority of schools simply invite everyone who is interested to fill out a secondary. Oh, by the way, that will run you roughly one hundred dollars per secondary.

Then the real weeding out process starts. Schools decide to invite a select group of applicants for an interview, and then you agonize for a few months before they reject or accept you.

The Search Is On

Simply enough, this is my search for something to do with my life (plus some odds and ends thrown in for good measure).

When I was a wee lad, I wanted to be a scientist. Archaeologist, Marine Biologist, Geneticist, Vulcanologist... you name a discipline in science and at some point I probably wanted to do that for a living. However, I quickly came to the realization that I wanted to be a doctor. So, for the past nine or so years, I have focused my life on that goal. Somewhere along the way, though, that plan seems to have come off the tracks.

I am currently reapplying to medical schools, but I am also staring into the abyss of "you're not going to make it to med school and you have degrees in Biology and Religion. Shit shit shit shit shit." It's not a situation I ever imagined I would be in, but here I am.

Whatever happens, you'll hear about it here as I attempt to make humor out of my shame. Feel free to offer suggestions or take bets on my final direction, because your guess is as good as mine.



P.S. If you know anyone on the admissions committee of a medical school, feel free to say, "Hey, there's this kid, Keegan Coleman, that you should keep an eye out for. He's pretty awesome/deserving/desperate." Or something like that. I have faith in your abilities to come up with a great way to sell me.