So the Match is over and I Matched to a program I loved since I interviewed there. I am headed to MetroHealth in Cleveland for a four-year combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency. I spent two days dazed and incomprehending, then the paperwork demon appeared and brought me back to reality. Like crash-landed me into reality, that I have less than a week to complete as much pen-pushing I can.
I am surrounded and inundated with the white stuff. Its stacked in piles and piles around my room - notes, books, papers, folders, more notes, notices, bills, booklets, pocketbooks, takeout menus - you get the idea. As I'm sitting on the floor on the one corner that is scrupulously paper-free, it strikes me that I'm upto my eyeballs in paper.
I am headed Home in less than two weeks time, and the sheer amount of the ragged paperwork I'm facing is staggering. I just spent three hours figuring out loan repayment schedules and realizing that yes, I am going to be forking over more than half my monthly income in loan repayments alone. While it means that when I finish residency I will be free of atleast one loan, it also crushes my dream of making it back to college - yes, I said college - for that long-sought degree in creative writing. Well, there is still the online classes option, I guess.
Meanwhile, the exercise in numbers reminded me of why I chose a career where the only math skillz I'm going to need are those that can be adequately performed on a standard four-function calculator. I am not fit company when I'm accounting for a huge monthly outgo relative to a small-ish monthly income. Yes, the numbers are still swirling around my head.
Once the number job gets approved, I can graduate. Its been like pulling teeth so far, what with people being to busy to tell me things in advance and then suddenly pulling it out as an obstacle. I feel like I'm running in one spot, unable to surmount this numbered hurdle.
Hopefully, tomorrow I can get atleast something moving at some end, I can get some more printouts and mail out some stuff that has been waiting for ages, including one Christmas present. Wheeeee.
Meanwhile I'm going to watch CSI: Miami online for the third night in a row until my brain lets me fall asleep. My insomnia is back in full force - I haven't slept two whole nights. Hopefully, tonight will be better.
