1. The note cards for my speech that I gave for Academic Decathlon my senior year of high school. It was a grand, patriotic speech. I had the timing perfect and everything. My second cousin beat my score by 2 points and won the bronze medal.
2. The movie ticket from when I first saw Serenity.
3. My MCATs scores. Yeah, nobody’s asking for those anymore.
4. Heating bills from 1999-2000.
5. My birth certificate (yay! I had wondered where that had gone!).
6. My Lord of the Rings map that I got with the first extended DVDs. It’s now rather discolored in spots.
7. Essays I wrote in high school.
8. A really ugly Jesus figurine that Sam gave me for Christmas one year. “You can’t throw away Jesus!” she said. So I haven’t. But I think I’ve found her Christmas present for next year.

Just no Step 3 scores. Step 1, Step 2 CK & CS, yep, got those, but Step 3 are missing. I’ve gone through every piece of paper that I own and I can’t find them. I’m pretty sure that they were accidentally thrown away when I was cleaning through things. I just wish I could remember what they were. I know that I passed, obviously, and I have a rough idea of what my score was, but I have no way of confirming. To request my score, I have to fill out a form, have it notarized that I am me, mail it in for 5 business days of processing and then my scores will be sent back to me. So if I’m lucky, I’ll have them by the end of next week. It’s not cheap either. But since I need those scores, I have to cough up the money.

I’m going ahead with the applications. I’ve spent way too much time and effort coordinating all of this. I can’t imagine that I’m the only one who thought to wait to send in applications until the Match registry was open. And it’s not my fault that the process was so horribly arranged. Seriously, I hunted on all of the universities websites looking for application information and there wasn’t anything mentioned about deadlines anywhere. The only program that had a deadline listed on their website was Columbia University who recommended that “applicants submit their information 2 years prior to the starting date” (ie July), which I had already missed by the time I even made up my mind. I’m sure that there are going to be programs that are not going to offer me interviews because of this. But here’s what I’ve got going in my favor:

From last year’s match:

Of the 49 programs last year, only half matched. The three programs that I’m most interested in at the moment (Virginia, San Francisco and here) did not match. I’ve still got a chance.

Thanks again to platypus and bjorks_defender for their help with my letter. It was so appreciated.

Every time I apply for something, it goes wrong. Medical school, the many board tests, residency. And now this fellowship.

So I get on to register for the match. There has been absolutely no information at all about what is needed for the registration. Just how much it costs. You can’t find out information about the programs until you register.

Registration opened today.I get on, and they need my USMLE scores. And I can’t find my Step 3 score. I don’t throw anything away without double and triple checking that it’s not needed. I have paystubs from when I was a tutor my sophomore year of college. But I can’t find this. It’s not available online. To request a copy will take 5 business days and I can’t actually send a copy to myself without even more time being involved.

So I fudge the results, I’ll fill in details later and finally can pull up the programs’ information and see this:

Application Deadline: 12/31/09.

12/31/09.

As in 5 days ago.

How am I supposed to know about an application deadline when I can’t register until 4 days after its already passed?????

I give up. Life, I take the hint. I guess I’ll try again next year or apply for open position after the match is over. I don’t know. I don’t know.