I am SO pumped about the marathon I'm doing in February. The Marine Corps Marathon was fun last year, but I really think, now that I know what to expect, that this next one is going to blow that one out of the water. It's in my hometown, meaning I'll be sleeping at home with my parents (rather than in a hotel) and running past familiar sights, and part of the run is even right on the beach! Not only that, but I think I'm going to be able to do it a LOT faster than I did the last one. Now that I know how awesome it can be to use a pace group and a run-walk strategy (run 3 minutes, walk one minute -- wash, rinse, repeat :)), I think I'll be doing that from the get-go rather than stumbling into the group accidentally around mile 21 (as I did last year). My time last year was six hours flat, but I feel supremely confident that I can shave off a full hour this time around, if not more. Right now, I'm planning to start out with the 4:30 pace group, and that way I can slow down as needed to the 4:45 or 5:00 group, depending on how I'm feeling. Also, I'm planning to be around 20 pounds lighter than I was for the last marathon, which in and of itself should help me go a lot faster.

Which brings me to my next point... there are four weeks left of our Biggest Loser competition at work, and as far as I know, I'm still in the lead. I'm kind of at a plateau right now -- I was exactly the same weight at last week's weigh-in that I was the week before), but I'm still loving the way my clothes are fitting. I've been a size ten since high school, but I've been comfortably wearing an eight for the past couple of weeks, which is awesome. (Secret: I also tried on two pairs of Liz's jeans while she was gone -- size six -- and they both fit!) The final weigh-in is October 22nd, and I'm only six or seven pounds away from the goal I'd been aiming to hit by that date, so we'll see what happens.

So my weekend kicked off with some Car Drama -- I walked out of the house yesterday morning to a dead battery, which is a first in my ten-plus years of driving. I had a minor heart attack for a little while, then calmed down when I realized it was probably "just" the battery and could be resolved relatively easily. Terry, one of L's and my "surrogate dads", came over, assessed the situation, gave me a jump, and followed me to the Advanced Auto so that I could get a new battery. (The man should qualify for sainthood -- he lives in Pittsboro and drove all the way to Raleigh just to help me out. I've got to remember to inscribe his name on a plaque or something!) Ninety bucks later, it was installed and working perfectly. Exhale.

It might have been a blessing in disguise, actually, since L was about to take my car (since it's supposedly the more reliable one... ha) to Tennessee to visit an old friend. So the drama was actually right on time, since if the car had to die, I'm definitely glad it croaked right here in the parking lot on a weekday when I didn't have to go to work and had the time to take care of it, rather than in Tennessee on a Sunday with L by herself with no one to call on. That would have sucked.

The other 'blessing' part of that situation is that it led to me finally get off my butt and get the rotors/calipers/brakes fixed; for a long time now, the car has been vibrating heavily every time I brake, and I haven't had the money or time to get it assessed since I knew it was probably just the rotors. When I called my parents to tell them about the battery, we talked about the rotors and they offered to pay for that repair too (I have had so many wonderful adults stepping up to the plate in my life this weekend!), and I decided I'd rather (a) give L the safest possible car to go drive through the mountains in, and (b) use the 'in for a penny, in for a pound' mentality and just get all the car stuff done in one day. So off I went to my regular mechanic. Which involved driving to Chapel Hill on my day off, but what the heck. They squeezed me in at 2:30 like the wonderful people they are, and by five o'clock I had a car with fresh oil, rotated and balanced tires, and brakes that work like butter. And, of course, a new battery. The car feels like new! :)

Anyway, Car Drama aside, I've been pretty productive over the past 48 hours... did my long run for the week, did my grocery shopping, used a coupon and got some free photos printed at Target, requested yet another official copy of each of my transcripts for my Duke interview (oh! yeah! I got an interview at Duke! November 12th), did the laundry, bought a couple of new Kindle books, cleaned the apartment, and spent over two hours buying and investigating the online materials I need for my organic chem class (which starts on Monday... ugh). I even found the time to start plowing my way through the DVDs of the first season of Gilmore Girls. I copied them from my aunt once upon a time and never really watched them all the way through, and since the third season is high up on my Christmas list this year (because it seems like most of my favorite episodes fall in that season), I figured I should start catching up.

On tap for the coming days: work next weekend (I've been a deadbeat when it comes to picking up weekend shifts because we've been out of town so much lately; I need to start pulling my weight again), enjoying all this new TV we're finally getting (Grey's Anatomy! Biggest Loser! Brothers & Sisters! Flash Forward!...) and going to see Whip It when it comes out. For those who haven't heard, Whip It is a new movie with Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore, centering around roller derby... and Oh. My. God. I haven't even seen the movie yet, and I'm already oddly hooked on wanting to try the sport. For some reason, I just feel like I would be so good at it! Not to mention, having permission to knock people over would be awesome. *grin*

Actually, the Carolina Rollergirls are having open tryouts on the 10th (yes, I've looked, and yes, I seriously deliberated whether or not to go for it), and they have their matches ("bouts") right around the corner from our apartment... but I decided against it in the end due to (a) the amount of gear I'd need just to try out (pads, etc.), (b) the need for attending a few of the open practices before tryouts (since I haven't been on skates in several years), (c) the level of the skills they ask you to demonstrate at tryouts (most of which would be okay -- timed sprints, gliding squats, strength testing, etc. -- but some of which, like jump turns, would be a little intimidating), and (d) the biggest reason... the time commitment if I actually made the team. There would be practices 2-3 times a week and bouts on the weekends. If I were "just" a regular 40-hour-a-week worker without much else in my life -- without my sights on PA school, without juggling online classes and everything else that I have going on, then I might think about it more seriously... because part of me is really sad that I won't even be trying out and getting a taste of it... but given my current life situation, I just don't see it happening. :(

Think that's all for now.

I love long weekends. So far, I've done my long run for the week (5 miles), bought two new cable-knit sweaters at Target (at twenty bucks a pop, I couldn't resist), and started rereading an old Jodi Picoult book; L and I have also gone to brunch at the Flying Biscuit with our friend Kelsey (a weekly tradition), done our grocery shopping for the upcoming week (a necessary evil), and gone to see Julie & Julia (which was surprisingly cute). L also bought her iPhone on Thursday night, so, for her, much of this weekend has been spent doing all those little tasks one does upon getting a new phone -- updating contact lists, downloading apps, syncing necessary photos and music, creating and assigning ringtones, etc. She's not nearly as bad as I was when I got mine, however; the thing barely left my hand for three weeks. (She joked that I was flaunting my mistress in front of her.)

In other news, there are suddenly so many clothes I want to buy that it's ridiculous. Look at these and these and these. I've never really been a "clotheshorse"-type, but some odd combination of being 25 and of having lost a little weight is suddenly causing everything I try on to look super good. I don't know if nine pounds have really made that much difference or if it's just that I'm "learning how to shop" for my body type -- or both -- but it's nice. It's also frustrating, though, because I really don't make enough money to be able to go out and buy clothes more than once in a blue moon... so this may be the first year in recorded history that my Christmas list is composed almost entirely of clothes!

I also just revised my prepared list of PA interview questions for my next interview (which, if I'm lucky, will probably be Duke). Before the UF interview, I had written up a list of things they might ask me and how I planned to respond, just as a way of organizing my thoughts and making sure I remembered to hit all the "high points" and didn't walk out the door thinking, "dang, I should have said ______!" It was a good tactic, but there were definitely certain things that I omitted and other things I added once I was actually speaking, so I decided to edit the file to reflect that. Based on last year's postings on the PA Forum, the first wave of Duke applicants people got their interview invitation emails on the first Friday in September, then had their interviews on the first Monday in November. However, the priority deadline was two weeks later this year, meaning that everything else (emails, interview dates, acceptance emails) will probably be later as well; still, that means I can probably expect an email sometime around the middle/end of this month if I'm selected. Cross your fingers...

Just a one-line update to say that they called this morning and I GOT IN!!!!!!!!!! :)

So my first PA interview is behind me, and I'm pleased to say that it went exceedingly well. Without giving too many specific details -- because, let's face it, that's not really 'kosher' with so many people yet to interview this season -- I'll walk you guys through it a bit.

The first afternoon was mostly spent talking about admissions, curriculum, and financial aid, as well as touring the facilities (including a $250,000 human simulator that breathes, blinks, has a heartbeat and bowel sounds, and can receive/respond to medications and "die" on the table -- great practice for procedures and emergencies). Some current students from both years attended and spoke to us about their experiences with each class, as well as a recent grad who is now working at Shands (the UF hospital -- which, incidentally, is a level-1 trauma center). Among other things, the students stated that when they started their second-year clinical rotations, that they actually felt better-prepared than the third-year med students they were rounding with, since they'd been seeing patients since the very beginning of their education, while the med students were just getting started with the hands-on stuff. Also unique to this program is the fact that they use full human cadavers in their gross anatomy labs rather than prosections; hardly any programs do that. The program was also recently elevated to the status of "School", so that they are no longer a mere "program", but the "School of Physician Assistant Studies." Again, very few other programs can boast such a status; it really speaks to the degree of support they have from the university. After the formal part of the afternoon, there was also a dinner at T.G.I.Friday's with some of the current students; no faculty were allowed to attend, so we could talk candidly about any facets of student life that we didn't feel comfortable asking the professors.

The second day, we got to sit in on an actual PA class (which happened to be dermatology), followed by our official interviews. I had major butterflies upon waking up that morning, but sitting in on the class and getting my head into the familiar academic environment went a long way toward calming me down. For me, the class was also the single most helpful piece of the process as far as making the program feel 'manageable' to me. As I told one of my interviewers -- even though I've been preparing for this for nearly three years now, part of me still felt as though the people who actually got accepted to these programs were a lot smarter or more capable than I am, and attending the class made me realize that that really wasn't the case. At first I just looked around the room at all the clicking keyboards and thought, "Hmm, I could be that girl eating a bagel over there, or that girl drinking a Starbucks in the front," but as the lecture moved forward and we got deeper into the topic of the day ("Non-Bacterial Vesicular and Pustular Diseases... great pictures), I realized that I actually already knew a lot of what was being discussed. Chicken pox, shingles, oral herpes -- all things I've seen and learned about firsthand during the past 18 months, working in general pediatrics. And when people raised their hands at the end to ask questions, I actually knew two of the answers. I walked out of the room smiling, unconsciously nodding my head. I really can do this.

After that, it was on to the interviews. (This is the part where I'm going to be rather circumspect about most of what was discussed, so as not to "give anything away".)

1.) I met with one of the program administrators first, and we mostly discussed 'feedback' about the past two days -- what I liked, what I didn't like, the parts of the process that I had gotten the most out of, etc. She was wonderful and very easy to talk to; her job was mostly just to get a sense of my personality as well as to get feedback about the program in order to fine-tune the process for next year. After that, I headed out to the cafeteria to await my next turn, already feeling much more relaxed and confident.

2.) The second interviewer was a PA herself, and she had done her training at Duke (my top choice). I'm not sure if UF was notified of the other schools I'm applying to, or if she merely saw 'Raleigh, NC' on my name tag, but that interview quickly turned into a conversation about the differences between Florida and North Carolina when it comes to the responsibilities of a PA. For a while, I was asking her the questions. At one point, she said, "I felt that I had more respect as a PA student in North Carolina than I do as a practicing clinician here in Florida." (My response was something along the lines of, "Then I'm really glad that we have people like you down here, who have seen things work both ways and who know it can be different -- because that's the way progress will be made.") We also discussed my experiences in linguistics, how I manage a heavy workload (hello, International Baccalaureate) and why I had chosen to become a PA. This was my longest interview, and at the end, she looked me straight in the eye and said, "You're a very strong candidate; you might get a call tonight." (Which was a bit of an exaggeration, since it's 2:15pm on Wednesday and I've yet to hear anything, but nice to hear.)

3.) This was my shortest interview. I was supposed to meet with the director of the program, which I'd really been looking forward to (he seems like a really funny guy with a great personality), but after 45 minutes of sitting in the cafeteria waiting for my name to be called, they substituted a different woman instead. Apparently the director likes to talk -- this was a running joke among the faculty and current students, about how he talks more than the applicants do when he's doing interviews -- and one of the administrators finally came out laughing and shaking her head, saying, "He's still in there!", and escorted me to a different office instead. I didn't feel that this interview went quite as well as the others, probably due to sitting idle for so long and losing my "interview face", but it was still good. I had one 'pause' where I momentarily lost my train of thought, which hadn't happened at all in either of the other rooms -- though by the time she'd finished telling me that it was okay, I'd recovered my line of thinking, so it wasn't that big of a deal. She asked me mostly the same types of questions as the second woman had, and I was in her office for only around ten minutes before they told me I could go.

The deal is, if the three interviewers unanimously rank you at a 5+ level ("Accept Immediately" on their rating scale), they call within 48 hours to offer you a seat; if they're not unanimous (even if it's two 5+ rankings and one mere 5), you get a call in January along with everyone else. Neither option would be bad -- if they call today or tomorrow, my mind will be at ease, and if they call in January, I'll get to put off the $200 deposit for a few more months. :) Yesterday, I was positive that they were going to call; today I'm less sure, but I'm also completely fine with the idea of waiting. I feel absolutely certain that they're going to accept me; it's just a question of when. That may sound arrogant, but you guys are just gonna have to deal with it, because I'm proud of how well I did. :)

As for a general overview: I was absolutely blown away by the level of compassion we as applicants received from the faculty. Over and over, it was stressed that we were already qualified to attend their program (they only interview 120 candidates out of 1000+ applications), that we should feel no competition among our applicant group, that this interview was merely to determine whether or not our personality was a good 'fit' for this particular program and whether their dynamic was a good fit for us. They spread out the process over two days to allow us to relax, held one-on-one interviews rather than group -- because, they said, they wanted to allow all personality types to shine, including introverts -- and even those sessions were so relaxed that they felt more like three friendly chats than a formal interview. Also of note, the program's director (who, incidentally, was largely responsible for the now-national availability of CASPA) explained the structuring of the curriculum in depth, pointing out exactly how each course built on its predecessor and how it was all specifically designed to increase our confidence as we progressed through the program. I didn't expect that degree of 'personableness' from such a large university, and I was, again, completely blown away. As I told the 'feedback' interviewer, you come into the application process with a preconceived idea of what each school will be like, and then you're invariably surprised -- in this case, very pleasantly so. And as I told her, I have (hopefully!) four interviews yet to come... but those other schools are going to have a very difficult time measuring up.

Props to UF for a wonderfully structured interview process.

In other news, I'm honing in on the ten-pound mark in the Biggest Loser contest. I thought this trip was going to really screw me up, what with all the restaurant food, but I did a good job of sticking to my exercise routine, and I really didn't backslide at all. I was still in the lead as of last week (the only person who hadn't gained any weight back!), so I'll keep you all posted on how things go in that department.