The Future is...

I could really use another year right now.

Another year to study, another year to learn, another year to figure out what in the world I'm supposed to be doing.

How did this all happen so quickly? How is it almost over?

I'm so close to having a nervous breakdown these days that it's not even funny. People start talking about electives, or even worse residency and my heart goes into my throat and I feel sick.

I haven't taken the step yet, I do plan to. This summer hopefully, but that will be too late for almost every medical elective in the US during the fall. On top of that most hospitals only take US students anyway. I called no less that twenty hospitals yesterday and only ONE said they could take me, and even then they don't have spaces until February. The state of Pennsylvania (where most of my family lives) apparently won't let any international students do electives at their hospitals. Go figure.

So what happens with that is if I don't get it sorted within the next few weeks is that I can't do electives this Fall. That doesn't sound so bad when I put it like that, but let me clear up the consequences of all of this. No elective = no recommendation from a US doctor = fat chance of getting a residency.

Which means I'll have to take a year off, and during that year I'll have to figure out how to pay my excessive amounts of loans, AND figure out how to get a residency the next year even though my chances will be even more slim a year out from graduating than they already will be immediately after I graduate.

Basically, my future sucks. I should have just become a ski bum.