Ok, I know I said I know that my tendency to contemplate alternative life outcomes is annoying, but as I said even bore I said that, I am the only person who is writing and reading this journal, so I am going to allow myself to indulge in yet another trip through the twilight zone. As I was looking over my college transcripts which I sent with the other forms I received today, I noticed that it was very obvious I had no intention of going to medical school for the first 3 years of college. My courses at Chicago were all philosophically and scientifically oriented, and at Columbia I overdosed on East Asian studies courses with a bent towards film and art. I wonder, I wonder...if I had stayed the course where would I be now? One possibility is Law School just because it would have been the safe way out without forsaking the liberal arts education, but a far more interesting possibility is that I would have become a graduate student in East Asian studies, just finishing up my PhD probably at Columbia or maybe at Berkeley. I would probably be pretty fluent at Japanese, maybe also in Chinese and at least have a conversational grasp of French or maybe Russian. I would probably be eyeing an opportunity to go overseas and do some kind of field research for a couple of years maybe teaching a course at a foreign university. My dress would consist of tweed elbow patched jackets, blue collar shirts tucked into khakis, and worn brown shoes. My signature piece would be the shoulder strap leather bag. I would be aiming for the distinguished young professor look. In the course of my studies I would have fallen in love with a fellow graduate student studying Hinduism or Buddhism, fluent in French, Italian and Sanskrit, petite and elegant, shy and intelligent, who I would have married and we might be considering having our first child right about now as we figure out our next step. The salient difference from my current life situation would be the fulfilling personal relationship founded on a common singleness of purpose, cultivated within the warmth and safety of ivory towers. Medicine also has a singleness of purpose, but lacks the protection of ivory towers. If one is to find love one while engaged in medicine, it must be found betwixt the showering arrows of an invading army besieged outside the fortress gates. One must be able to fight and love at the same time, something which I have not yet figured out how to do, something which I do not think I am capable of doing, although I am very well capable of doing one or another at different times. Ok, this is just embarrassing. Like I said, I had nothing to inspire me today, so I am writing this drivel for the sake of writing, not for reading. Caput.

I finally received the information packet with my letter of appointment from Mayo. The mailman came around 3 PM today so my entire morning and early afternoon was pretty much a wash. The information they sent didn't really add much to what I already have, but it was nice to finally sign that sucker and send it off. That's a big check off my to do list. Once I had that settled, I continued the gradual process of dismantling my life here in Brooklyn and packing it up for shipping to Minnesota. I didn't actually do any physical dismantling so much as administrative dismantling, such as preparing to cancel my cable service, preparing to store my car, preparing to settle my lease, preparing my travel documents, etc, all of which I made some progress on today. I've also been trying to fix up little things around the apartment like the leaky faucet and a broken kitchen drawer. The leaky faucet was fixed beeeaaauuuuutifully, but the kitchen drawer will have to wait until I can go to the hardware store for a hanger/adapter thingy which I hope they have. Otherwise I'm pretty much ready to go. Just need to do my laundry on the last day, return the cable box, place my car in storage, give my keys to my neighbor, clean up my bathroom and clean out my fridge, and send off some last minute emails. What is worrying me is not my immediate departure, but my return and second departure to Minnesota which will require some carefully coordinated time management if I am going to make it out to Rochester in time to find a place to live and settle in before residency starts. In all likelihood I will end up taking a short-term lease for a month or so while I look for a permanent place to live. That should be fine because I am not going to have much with me anyway so a furnished apartment would be a nice luxury in the first few weeks. Whew, whew, whew, I'm looking forward to starting a new life, although I have to say its not nearly as exciting as the many other transitions I'd had before starting medical school, ie going to summer camp, going to college, transferring, going abroad, starting work and living in my first apartment, and starting medical school. I had a mini-crisis last night for some reason as I despaired over whether it was worth it to take that year off from medical school. Technically I am supposed to get residency credit for that year, but I am not getting any signs from the residency program that they would even consider granting me that credit. Fortunately, there is another resident starting with me who is in the same predicament so they can't so easily brush the matter under the rug. What I was despairing over last night was whether anything would have been different in the long run if I had just gone straight through med school. Chances are I would not even have received interviews at the places I interviewed at much less match at a great program like Mayo, but does getting into Mayo justify an entire extra year (assuming I do not get credit)? In all likelihood I would have matched at a program in NYC, most likely Columbia or possibly Cornell or even NYU, any of which I would be delighted with and would probably be very happy or at least comfortable about staying in NYC. I still would have a good shot, if not a better shot than from Mayo, at getting a fellowship at MSKCC or the NYCMEO from a NYC program, although my options for private practice would probably be much more limited. From Mayo, my impression is that I could go East, West, or even South for fellowship since it has more of a national reputation than any of the NYC programs. But since I have always imagined myself coming back to NYC I was wondering whether I didn't make a mistake by taking that year off. In the end, though, I figured that the fault in that line of thought is that I probably wouldn't even have applied for pathology if I didn't take that extra year. I would have settled for something like medicine or maybe even surgery, which in the long run, and I'm talking like 10-20 years down the line, I am certain I would regretted. I don't have those doubts about pathology which is something I am grateful for. Even in the short run, I'm sure I made the right decision. If I had done medicine, I probably would have ended up at a NY program, not Columbia or Cornell which would be out of reach, maybe NYU or Sinai, which I would be happy but not elated with, or possibly one of those locoregional hospitals on Long Island. If I had done surgery, there would be a good chance that I would have ended up back at my medical school for residency which would have been a disaster. That single realization, that my year off effectively derailed any possibility that I would have ended up in a medicine or surgery residency at my current school, completely justified in my mind taking a year off. Not that I think the training is sub-par, on the contrary, I think it would be excellent in certain respects, but the prospect of staying put for another 4 years, walking the same hallways, buying coffee from the same stands, parking in the same lots, would be enough to make me bolt, not that that outcome would necessarily be the worst thing in the world, but the rules of the match do not allow one to know one's fate until it is too late to change it. This is probably the most humdrum entry in this journal so far. I am seriously considering deleting it. It really has no value beyond revealing my neurotic preoccupation with hypotheticals. Yah yah yah. Nothing happened today that really inspired me. What a shame, another 24 hours lost forever. Oh except that this morning while I was browsing some online personal ads (yes, I admit I did scope out the situation even before I came up with my rank list) I saw this absolutely incredible Chinese girl in Minneapolis who recently relocated from Boston and is apparently a little lonely and lost, much like I will be. It wasn't just that her picture was breathtaking, which it was, a ballet dancer for 16 years she said, but also intelligent, graduated early from Brown, worldly, Chinese, Italian and French, and whimsically mysterious yet beguilingly honest, not sure why she went to Minnesota except that she was looking for a new experience. Hmm, somehow that gives me hope, that maybe Minnesota has some kind of mystical draw for wandering souls like myself and this ballet dancing babe from Boston.