Whoa.

Overwhelmed. That's all there is to it. Here's why.

1. My mouth still hurts. It is not healing as fast as I thought it would, and I'm crabby about it.

2. Studying for part 2 of my boards. Multiple choice test on August 30th, practical exam on September 3rd. I need to do well on the multiple choice, as Emergency Medicine residencies put a lot of stock in that exam. However, I have no motivation to study and find myself daydreaming...a LOT. This is stressing me out BIG time. And in true-to-myself fashion, I am ignoring it and pretending it will just go away. Typical.

3. My residency application is due September 1st. This is a big deal. Not only is it filling out the application (including a personal statement...ugh!), but it is getting letters of recommendation and, biggest problem of all, deciding what programs to apply to. If all I had to do was get the application ready and click "submit", I would not be that worried. But I need to narrow down the 120+ EM programs across the country to the 20-25 that I want to apply to. And I don't even know if 20-25 is the right number to apply to. This terrifies me, as all applications usually do. For college I didn't apply to enough programs, for med school I probably applied to too many...what the heck am I supposed to do now?? I know that I need to end up interviewing at and ranking 10+ programs, but how many do I need to apply to to ensure that I get at least 10 interviews? And how do I know what programs I am interested in? Clearly this is the biggest deal for me.

4. I still don't have my Surgery exam grade. I have my OB exam grade, and I did pretty well. Just waiting on the official overall grade (including my clinical grade) from OB. But Surgery...I am getting antsy.

5. I need to start getting things in order (flights, $$, paperwork, etc.) for my away rotation in October and my international rotation in February. I know those are farther away than the other things on my list, but unfortunately they still swirl around in my head.

6. Boys. Why do I have to get so excited every time only to end up feeling let down? That's all I have to say about that.

There's more...I'm sure of it. But that's enough for now. Back to studying and feeling slightly inadequate and in limbo. Blah.