"If you are taking the MCAT this summer, why don't you apply this cycle? You never know God's plan may just be that.."

Hopefully, Mi doesn't mind me using her comment as the title of my new post. But this is certainly a question I've had to really think about over the past couple months.

The short answer is as of now, I'm not prepared to apply this cycle. That said, I'm going to keep my options open for applying to med school this year for obvious reasons, I want to be a Doctor. Complicating things somewhat is the fact that my family is seriously considering moving BACK down South this summer, yeah I know, that same "South" I've said many times I'd NEVER return too, LOL!!! So I'll need to see how things fall into place over the next couple months since this will be a major change for all of us, most especially my 9th grade daughter.

Moving on to MCAT studying, I'm almost done with the EK verbal book, scoring "9's" on the most recent 2 chapters. EK questions are much harder than the actual MCAT verbal passages, so while I'd like that score to be higher, I'm not all that upset with where I am right now. I've also added the first chapter of Physics to my schedule and so far, so good. But I haven't finished Chemistry, so I'm going to have to really get to work to make sure I stay on schedule to be ready by August 16, 2011.

Speaking of schedule, what I've realized is that students prepping for this test should understand that a schedule that works for one person, may not work for someone else. And folks should always be open to changing things up a bit to accommodate your study needs. Again, I find it much more challenging to study for the exam because I haven't had the classes necessary to sit for the exam in over 20 years, but I would have been bored to death retaking many of these classes (plus I realized I really didn't need to after trying an online chem class through MIT).

Another epiphany of sorts I'm having is about becoming a Doc that regularly sees patients and I think a lot of my shift in career thinking has to do with the empty nest I'll have by the time residency rolls around. Areas I like and may have mentioned before include Geriatric Oncology, Preventative medicine/Epidemiology, Neurology, and of course Pathology. And in thinking of moving back down South, I also think about how much I would enjoy being a country Doc, the kind that makes house calls to elderly patients. Or a Doc at a health clinic for the poor. Of course, the potential problem I see in these fields is a HIGH amount of patient noncompliance. And I'm not sure how well I would react to that in the sense of thinking it would burn me out mentally to regularly see people literally and slowly killing themselves because they won't take care of themselves/follow doctors orders. In other words, how much can I "help" a person who won't "help" themselves?

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about what the future holds because it's always pretty damn interesting, whatever happens!!