The Day of Reckoning

Today was the day I've dreaded for the last 5 years. And I'm so glad it's over! After six months of mind-numbing studying, and an especially grueling month of taking practice tests, I took the MCAT. It's pretty surreal that it's over. I feel like a new man.

I signed up back in January, which apparently was late, because the Utah slots were all filled. I was forced to sign up for a spot in Vegas instead. We drove down to Hurricane Wednesday night and stayed at the Worwoods. I was a little bummed to find that the ducklings, now fully grown, were eaten by raccoons the day before we arrived. We pulled up to the their house to find an animal control officer showing my Uncle Danny how to set a raccoon trap.

This morning we woke up early and drove the remaining two hours to Vegas. We checked in at a crappy motel and dropped by IN-N-OUT for some authentic Western cuisine. I did some last minute cramming and then we drove over to the testing center. The waiting room was crammed with nervous students, and I wasn't impressed with their choice of language. Seriously, these people want to be physicians? Probably plastic surgeons. Checking in required an ID and a biometric fingerprint scan and my mother's maiden name (minus the last one).

The test took 4 and a half hours. I'd taken 14 practice tests, and it didn't feel much different than those, except I'd never taken the time to do the written part. Halfway through the exam there are two writing samples, each a half hour long, and they drained me way more than the physical sciences section. They weren't incredible essays, but the graders don't expect much for a first draft. If it weren't for that dang written portion, I wouldn't have to wait a month for my test results. The biology part was more organic chemistry heavy than I expected, and I was shocked that the physical sciences portion didn't have much acid/base chemistry.

After the exam we drove around the city. Vegas is wack. We hit up H & M, which was pretty small, and got some food. We decided to try to find another mall, called Town Square, and punched the name into the GPS. It directed us to the outer city limits to a gas station that happened to be called Town Square. We decided it wasn't worth it to keep driving around and came back to the motel.

In other news, I milked a goat on Monday. It's harder than I thought to coax the milk out of them goat teats.