Bloom Where I’m Planted?

In one of my recent posts, I vented a bit about some of the quirks found in my home state. However, because of today’s events, I’m wondering if the state of Utah, as an entity, read the post, was offended, and is now trying to kick us out.

I better start from the beginning:

Salvador’s (my DH) ambition grows exponentially as we get older. When I first met him in high school, (that’s another story for another day), his career plan was to get an associates degree at a local state college and then get an entry level tech support job.

Fast forward 6 years. We were engaged and both attending a local state college, but he was now working towards a bachelors in computer science.

Fast forward 2 more years. We had been married for about a year when he was accepted as a transfer student to a local university. He now ultimately planned to obtain a master’s degree in Computer Science.

Fast forward again 1 more year. We now have our darling baby boy. One night, Salvador comes home and surprises me with the news that he had changed his major. Not going to change his major, he had already done it.

”What? What major did you change to?” I say in an attempted supportive but mostly frustrated voice.

”I changed it to physiology, I’m going to be a doctor! I want to help people!” He announced excitedly.

I think I kind of lost it at that point. His new goal was very admirable, but I was tired of being starving student parents. You see, when Curious George was born, we decided that it was very important to us that I be able to stay home with him, as far as it was humanly possible. While we are very lucky and grateful to have ways in which to make this work, we have zero point no dollars most of the time. In order for him to become a doctor, it meant we would be in this financial limbo for possibly 10 more years. At the time, that sounded like slow agonizing torture.

Although I still think that Salvador’s decision was brash (he has since apologized many times for not talking to me about it first), that it will eventually be a wonderful thing, and I’m now excited for the journey. Currently, Salvador will be getting his bachelor’s in April, and we are in the process of applying to medical school. I researched all of our choices and narrowed it down to 18 schools.

The medical school application process goes like this:

Round 1: Apply to chosen medical schools.

Round 2: If they like you, they’ll send secondary materials for you to fill out. Many require ridiculously vague essay questions like: “In 250 words or less, please give us some insight as to who you are as a person.”

Round 3: If the school really likes you, you will get invited for an interview.

Round 4: If the school really, really likes you than you get accepted! Yay! If they only sort of like you, you will get waitlisted, and then you hope and pray that after lasting through all of those rounds that a spot opens up for you.

Out of hundreds of medical schools across the country, there is only one in Utah. The University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City. However, the University of Utah is BY FAR, Salvador’s best chance of getting into medical school (Salvador’s MCAT score is very competitive there, they need minorities like mad, and they give preference to Utah residents). With family and friends nearby, super low tuition, and the far superior Salt Lake Valley beckoning us, it is our first choice.

So far, Salvador has recieved secondary materials from almost every school that we applied to. However, today we recieved our first rejection letter and it was from the University of Utah. The problem was that out of all of the schools we applied to, the U of U is the only one that has a minimum GPA, and MCAT score requirements. Salvador far surpassed all of the minimum requirements, except for one. His non-science GPA was too low by three-tenths of a point. Yes, three-tenths of a point is preventing him from going to the U of U.

OK, Utah, we can take a hint. It’s time for us to move on*.

*This is assuming that Salvador gets accepted somewhere else, but I don’t really want to think about that not happening right now.