Thursday, February 11, 2010

Podiatrist!




So a few weeks ago, I found out that I got accepted to go to Midwestern University in Glendale Arizona. I was really releived to find out. It was a uniquely fortunate experience I think. First of all, I got a letter from Midwestern in late November to invite me to an interveiw.
I got online and signed up really fast to find out when the interview dates were. I was interviewing at two different school, DMU (Iowa) and OCPM (Ohio) the 7th and 9th of december....respectively. My options for interview dates were the 10th or the 17th. AZ was my first option so I decided finally to reschedule my interview in Ohio and interview in AZ the 10th, or so I thought. I don't know if it was my clumsy fingers or the over excitement to get invited there (because the night i got invited to interview I was really excited) to interview that made me not think straight, but I mistakenly clicked the 17th....not the 10th. Regardless of what I did, I thought I scheduled the 10th and I even bought plane tickets the same night to Arizona for the 10th. I went along in life not thinking too much about it, went down to the interview with a friend who was interviewing on the same day and we walked into the admissions building and talked to the lady there and told her our names. Nate, my friend, had a name tag sitting there for him and there were a few others but none of them said Matt Cline, Shelley ID...I was patient and thinking, oh this was their mistake, it will be fixed in like 2 minutes when she realizes what has happened. But I told her my name and information and she got onto the computer and told me, "your interview is for the 17th, you are not supposed to be here until next week..." I was mortified, stupified, horrified by the thought that I showed up to one of, possibly the most influential inerviews of my life on the wrong day! She said that she would just add me to the schedule and not to worry about it. Well, to make a short story long, I worried about it. I went into the next room and drank about five of their free grape juices from their admissions fridge and who knows how many individually wrapped candies.
I sat there thinking to myself how best to play this hand of cards that I messed up with a poorly placed episode of absent mindedness. It was all I could think about and I decided to not act like I had done anything wrong. Treat it like it was not anyone's fault, not mine, not the school's, and for sure I was not going to bring it up to anyone. That would be the kiss of death. I didn't know if the admission's council knew that I had done it, but I am pretty sure that they had to of known. They were probably reading all of the other student's applications and the secretary comes in and throws down my application on the table and says something like, "here's another one from an idiot that doesn't know how to comb his hair or read a calander." In my imagination she was kind of critical. They had to know I came the wrong day, but like I said, I was NOT going to bring it up.
So the interview came and went. I felt good about it and the school. As the day came up that they met together to make the decisions about the students that interviewed the week before I sent emails to all of the professors that interviewed me and told them thank you and probably a few other things to make myself look gracious and worthy of a seat in their program. I mentioned how I read the entire packet given to me and listed as many things that I liked about the facilities, faculty, student body, and atmosphere that I expereinced at their school. Then the next day I was informed that I was put on their waiting list. Those are some of the most crushing words I have ever read in my life. I was also wait listed at the school in Iowa. I obviously worried about my application, was it my grades? was it my interview? was it because I was an idiot and came the wrong day? But I made a plan to immediatley begin to find more people to send letters of recommendation out to them and shadow more podiatrists to show this school that I was still serious about becoming a podiatrist. So I did, I set up a time to meet with a podiatrist in Rexburg, I emailed a podiatrist I know in Boise, I talked to two professors at school to have them write letters for me, and I prayed a lot.
Almost an entire month to the day had passed and I was getting ready to leave for my rescheduled interview in Ohio (not really the school I wanted to go to, but still a great program). It was a Monday and I was packing to leave for Ohio that night and fly out the next morning. While I was packing I tried to distract myself for a bit by checking my email and inbetween some homework assignment emails from my teachers was an email from a Dr. Thoms in AZ and I was not expecting what I read. I had to read it twice or three times to realize that this is how the best news I have heard in reaching any goal in my life so far would come, silently in an email with the subject heading of
Acceptance to Arizona Podiatric Medicine Program
and said;

Matthew,
Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the Arizona Podiatric Medicine Program for the Class of 2014. We had another committee meeting today, and the committee re-evaluated your application and is now offering an acceptance. I hope you will consider attending AZPod.

You will be receiving an official letter in the mail within the next week. Within the next few days, you can access information concerning the matriculation agreement and deposit information from our internet site. If you go to www.midwestern.eduthere is a link ‘mwunet’, which will then take you to your logon page.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email or phone me. Again, Congratulations!
Look forward to hearing from you,
Dr Thoms

SO I could hardly process what had happened at that point but finally was able to think about what was going on and I accepted online immediately, sent a thank you email that simply read, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, this is terrific news! and then I cancelled my flight to Ohio. I had got into the school I wanted so why spend the time and money to go to Ohio. Although I almost just used the tickets anyway to go to Cleveland and visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

2 comments:

  1. Matt thats awesome!! I'm so happy for you. You deserve it!

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  2. Well that's a start...keep it up man

    ReplyDelete