So I'm now well into the "fun" summer I promised myself if I got it and so far, its been great for the most part.

But now the logistics of becoming a medical student and a mom (and wife, friend, sister...) are starting to freak me out a bit. I have to admit, knowing full well what's in store for me (and knowing full well that "knowing full well" doesn't usually come close to reality in cases like these) made me take stock of my life and focus on getting certain things in line. I'm not going to go into detail on this because its a bit too personal, but its something I'm glad I did.

The biggest item on my TO DO list though is hiring a nanny and I've started the process. But until I have her moved into my house, I will be nervous. Especially since my parents are leaving back to Canada 10 days before Orientation and I will literally have no one except my husband (who has a full time job) to deal with all kid related things. We've decided that our best option would be to get a full time live-in nanny and my husband offered up his office above the garage to be the nanny's suite. Its a pretty sweet living area that is separate from the house. Its basically a studio apartment and has (or rather will have) a kitchen, as well as a bathroom. So the search begins.

But before I dwell into the balancing act that is being a mom-of-three-MD-to-be (lol, new Instagram handle perhaps?) I just wanted to do an update on what happened since I got my acceptance email.

Again there was a bit of a hiccup. They required a copy of my HS diploma as proof that I graduated from HS. Which is great except...I had no idea where mine was. I wasn't even sure which CONTINENT it was on, let alone if I even had it anymore. I've moved around so much and honestly, to me it was just a pretty piece of paper enclosed in a red leather plaque that I got on graduation day and promptly forgot about. When I applied for my undergrad degree, they cared more about my transcripts than the actual physical diploma. Anyway, my high school wrote a nice letter and issued me a duplicate diploma, however the admissions lady seemed a bit doubtful as to its authenticity when I sent it in with all the required documents. But after a few panicked phone calls and chats with the admissions lady to assure her that I did in fact graduate HS (and I have my HBA from my undergraduate as proof because no university, much less the prestigious program I graduated from, would have accepted me without graduating!) everything got sorted and I got the real acceptance letter (I knew for sure this one was real as it also had my tuition payment dates and instructions printed right on the front). After I got that email, I actually felt comfortable telling more of my friends about it. The best part about this whole story is that literally two week later my sister was cleaning out her closet in my parents house in Canada and she FOUND my original HS diploma! I had to laugh at that and I brought it back with me to Poland just in case.

Oh! And I forgot, my exam results that got me accepted to med school. Well people, I don't know what the average mark was or what the lowest or highest marks were because they haven't posted them yet, but I do know that my 53% (!!) got me in.

My husband was able to find some cached version of the results page from a previous year about a week before my exam and I saw someone that got accepted with a 47%. It gave me a much needed confidence boost since they literally take the top 120 scores to determine acceptance and it made me feel my chances were decent if someone with that score was able to squeeze though, as surely I'd be able to pull off something similar. I figured that either the exam was incredibly hard or the people who apply are incredibly dumb. But something told me it would probably be the former situation instead of the latter.  I literally sat down and created a table of different score scenarios I needed to get to on the exam that would get me to my goal of 50%, factoring in a 25% in physics. Then I'd take practice tests that I'd found on the internet (I found that AP level or MCAT ones were the best predictors) and would track the results of those to see what my chances were. I was getting between 50-60% weighted average and I decided that it was the best I could do and would have to try with that.

As I thought, I did best in biology, decently in chemistry and got a straight 25% in physics. I'm actually pretty proud of myself that I predicted my score so well and took the risk that I did by focusing on bio and chem and just straight up relying on the laws of statistics to help carry me through physics. I didn't mention this in my previous post but during the exam, one of the exam proctors had a look at my answer sheet and noticed my long column of coloured-in "B" bubbles and actually stopped and asked me "what on earth is this???" and I said, with a straight and serious face "my strategy". He looked at me like I was crazy but shrugged his shoulders and said "Ok then." And walked on.

But I did it and it worked!