I plan for this to be a blog about my life at medical school, but as I'm too excited to start, I shall make my first post about the day that I discovered I'd gotten in.
So after a long countdown to the scary date of August 19th, I was woken up by my phone alarm, going off at 5:50. I ran downstairs and turned on the computer (speed increasing measures already in place, such as not closing the browser the night before) only to find that UCAS had not yet gotten track set up. I kept on refreshing the page a few times, and then realised that I needed to find something else to do, and give it some time.
So instead I went on BBC iPlayer. Only to find that I'd already watched everything decent on there. So I watched The Story Of Tracy Beaker. Yep, that's right. An 18 year old sat watching Tracy Beaker. Now don't say I'm not cool. At about 6:10 I heard my mum stir upstairs. I quickly closed Tracy Beaker (I'm not sure my mum would approve) and refreshed track again. And UCAS had made it accessible.
So I signed in only for it to take to long and for the "there was a problem loading this page" to pop up. My mum had gone through to sort out her breakfast, whilst I was sat signing in repeatedly, my heart racing and my hands shaking. This was it!! Eventually, the tab said "Welcome" so I knew that it had finally logged me in and that this was my moment of truth. And then I read
"Congratulations. Your place at the University of East Anglia (E14) to study Medicine (A100) has been confirmed."
And I can honestly say that was one of the best moments of my life. After months of doubting whether I'd done enough, here was proof that I had, and that I'd be off to medical school. Track kept on breaking every time I tried to get onto the choices page, so I just left it on that welcome page, overjoyed at the one sentence that had decided my future.
My sixth form opened at 7am for results, but it was about 8 by the time we got there. I got called into a photo before I'd even gotten my results, but I knew I was in, which meant my smile was genuine. I went into the hall and found it surprisingly empty, but then one of my friends from Maths came rushing in and managed to lift me up and swing me round. Although she'd missed the grades slightly, her university had still decided to take her anyway.
Normally at results there's someone at the table to hand you your envelope. My table was deserted, but my envelope was on the top of the pile, so I just picked it up myself. Now after seeing I was in, I expected my results to be AAB, A's in maths and chemistry and a B in biology. So taking the paper from the envelope I was amazed to find that I actually had A*AA and that the A* was biology!!! Although me being me was just annoyed that I hadn't retaken C3. If I had, then I would also have an A* in maths.
Realising that these grades meant an extra £500 a year in bursary was another reason for celebration. This day just got better and better and it just wasn't sinking in that these were my grades and that I was going to medical school.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of phone calls, facebook and cake, and then I realised that as of the 20th, it was 4 weeks until I'm off to university. So since then I've been busy getting organised, with plenty of things still to buy!!
