Chapter 56

Year 4 started like all the previous years. Everything was similar yet there was a hint of a vibe that was different. The first thing that came to mind was that I was now living alone. I used to have a girlfriend who practically lived with me and now I was pretty much on my own. Sure she was only an hour drive away but between all the studying and optometry school applications, it was simply harder and harder to connect.

I described the switch from a regular relationship to a long distance one as “immediately awful”. There are simply things that are just different when the other person isn’t around. The physical is important. Despite how technology has come in the last decades, this barrier of companionship through a screen, at least for the girlfriend and I, was viscerally different. 

Luckily, everything else played out just as normal. It was pretty much the norm for me now. I had music and then I had some science courses. In between somewhere I would work at my job on campus and then attend the hobbies I liked. My schedule worked. All the planning I had done in the past about my program and all the summer courses allowing me to space out everything had led me to a sustainable way of university life in fourth year. This was intentional because this was it. This was the year that I would be the most ready for my optometry application. 

Fall turned to winter and with the migration of the geese and the snow came optometry school applications and interviews. I applied and once again, made it to the interview stage. I wasn’t alone this time despite the fact that the girlfriend was in Toronto now and couldn’t attend. LP was with me this time. It was kind of nice to have a friend in the interview with you, it helped me feel more relaxed. However, this wasn’t a completely helpful sight, afterall, I knew LP’s resume and GPA inside out from all the time we spent together and he was a competitor for sure. I respected him enough to know he was someone I definitely needed to watch out for. 

The interviews this year were quite similar to the previous years. This time around I got a question where the interviewer asked me what I would bring with me to a tropical deserted island. Another question was something along the lines of how many yellow cars are there in Canada? I answered them with logic as much as I can and used inferences of casual everyday observation as my own sources. Then, I tried to even throw in a joke or two. I remember that the interviewer seemed to have liked the answers whenever there was a small joke included last year so I thought my hardest to throw in a pun or two whenever I could. 

Overall, this year felt different than last year. The setting was the same and the type of interview was the same too but I felt confident. I knew ahead of time what to expect and simply followed through with all my previous knowledge. I made no mistakes in grammar and pronounced all my words better. I felt good. 

I would later find out that after this year’s interview I was actually supposed to feel very different than the year prior. The questions that were asked were vetted very differently and the bank of interview questions were carefully selected to be more mathematical. Regardless, I felt nothing different overall. If I had to guess, none of the others in the interview process who had been there the year prior felt that also. The differences were too subtle. I suppose that’s one of the reasons why that year was the last year the school did MMI’s. It was theorized that the admissions committee wanted a more objective or logical way of interviewing and, seeing as how the MMI’s vetted questions felt no different than the unvetted versions, switched interview methods the following year to CASPER. An interview process involving online responses and essays. 

After the interviews, LP and I went for food. We had a chat about how far we’ve come from high school. It was nice to have a friend who walked such a similar life as you. You can look back and reminisce about all the stuff you had to go through. Boy did we do a lot together. LP had been there since the beginning of this career goal. I have memories of highschool shenanigans, shenanigans from first year and becoming roommates, to getting sized up to incredibly massive class sizes and now finally interviews for careers of our future. We had a lot of history. Hell, when I first started dating the girlfriend, the first person I told was LP too. He knew everything I had gone through. 

We tended to get food after major events and exams and today was no exception. We ate and then just talked randomly about random stuff for a bit before going about our regular days. I think most guy friendships worked in a similar fashion. Anyhow, with the optometry interviews done. There was nothing left to do. Well, that is, if you didn’t have a demon named anxiety on your shoulder. I had one though. He told me to keep working. I still had to work on my backup plan, which was actually going to go into full swing soon.

As I mentioned, I had already done some volunteering for a pharmacy during the summer. When I applied in a Hail Mary in second year for the pharmacy program, it taught me that there was pretty much no use in applying if I didn’t have a reference, hence, I got one. With a reference from the pharmacist, I was now at least competitive in the PharmD program’s application pool. Sure enough, when the time came, I applied for the PharmD Program and this time, I would end up getting an interview spot. 

The topic of the PharmD interviews is an interesting one. I never made it to that stage in the past but even then, I heard some stories about the interview process because it was simply so wild. The interview process had a special segment where you could do anything you wanted. Literally anything. There were stories of applicants walking into the segment with an instrument, dance equipment and even their pets. I initially thought these stories were rumors until a breakdancer friend of mine told me that they did, in fact, do breaking during this segment of the interview. It was wild and when I first heard that I had gotten an interview, I was actually kind of taken back by what I should do. 

I had so much to choose from. I had breakdancing, for which I could mention how now I was a breakdance teacher for our on-campus breakdancing club. This was out there, but it was by no means the only hobby I harbored. I could also talk about how I was a double major in classical music with a graduation recital coming up in a few months or how about my involvement in acapella for the last 4 years. I was spoiled by choice. I even had an idea to make a masterpiece of variety by including an element of every hobby I did mashed into a single performance of sorts. This was an exciting idea but as it turns out…

I didn’t need to think about any of this at all. 

Less than a week after I got the email about the pharmacy interview, I went online to the forums for the Optometry school applicants and found it quiet. I knew exactly what this meant. Without even a second thought, I switched to the QUEST website and checked the status of my optometry school application. It was an ugly looking page with only text and numbers on it. There was nothing user friendly nor eye catching on it. But that didn’t matter, because on the page were my favorite words ever.

“Acceptance issued. Awaiting response”