The Second Happiest Day of my Life

Thursday, March 18, 2010 was the infamous Match Day. This is a day when fourth year medical students across the country find out at 11am central/12pm eastern standard time where they will be spending the next 3-7 years of their lives. Four years of tears, sweat, blood, overnighters, and angst, all accumulated into one moment. This moment was shared with 500 of my closest classmates, their friends/family, and my dear friends Lauren and Cory from Houston.

Coming up to that point, I honestly did not feel all that much angst. My first choice was Washington Hospital Center, which was not the most competitive of all the places to which I applied. I also had a fairly reassuring email from the residency director after I emailed her to let her know her program would be my top choice. So, I felt fairly confident. But, the moment I opened that letter onstage and saw the words, "Congratulations, you have matched!" with "Washington Hospital Center" typed just below, I felt an explosion of exhilaration and relief. Finally! After four years of feeling inadequate, always being almost, but, not quite there, I had finally accomplished exactly what I wanted to accomplish, no more, no less.

That euphoria of the second happiest day of my life reminds me of the happiest day of my life, Christmas Day, the tenth calendar year of the life of Alexandra. All year I had been begging and pleading with my parents for a battery-operated car with a shift stick. Christmas came and went that day, with no car. I had received some great presents and was satisfied, but not elated. I thanked my parents and quietly took my presents upstairs to my room. A little while later, my mom called me downstairs. She had our new Polaroid camera in one hand and an undeveloped picture in the other. She said, "I don't understand how to work this thing, the picture is all blurry." I told her she needed to wait for it to develop and proceeded to shake it (Hey Yeah! Shout out to Outkast!). I looked again at the picture and saw it was a picture of our courtyard with a gray, battery-operated Purego jeep sitting outside the window. I then, naturally, looked up to my mom and said, "I don't get it?" She frantically pointed out the window, at which point everything became clear- that courtyard had my Purego gray jeep with a shift stick. I started screaming and jumping up and down then ran for the door. All those months of wishing, hoping, begging, had come to fruition and that initial disappoint that Christmas morning I would yet again have to face another year without my Purego jeep, only served to further augment the euphoria I was feeling at that very moment.

I drove that car a good 50,000 miles around my pool, ran many a carpool, went to many a grocery store/shop/restaurant, and lived my perfectly normal imaginary life with my baby Betsy Wetsy named Beth, in the car seat next to me.

That euphoria I felt match day, though I am still incredibly excited to start this new phase of my life, has dissipated some and lent itself to a new feeling: scared shitlessness. I am excited yet concurrently terrified to finally have real responsibilities, to finally have the power to make decisions that could have potential life and death consequences. There isn't much I can do now, except hurry up and wait, and then bust my ass to do the best that I can come July 1. In the interim, I will dabble in Europe (the next several blog entries) and then will benefit from a prescription of Valium as July 1 approaches to curb the anxiety over the new life I am about to lead.

Best to all,
Alexandra