Last year, I posted one of the essays I submitted for my applications to medical schools. If you haven't read it, you may want to take a look at it now to get the proper context for this post. As you can probably assume from that personal statement, it has always been my dream to become a physician. I love GameSpot, I love video games, I love writing about video games, and I love helping out in the community here. But my real passion has always been medicine. I applied to medical schools last fall for entrance into the c|ass of 2012, but as the rejection letters kept coming, I began to think that I'd missed my opportunity. I moved in with my fiance and decided to apply for PhD programs in Psychology, because I like the research I'm doing right now. It lets me interact with patients on a daily basis, but that's all I'm really doing - interacting. I don't know enough to treat the symptoms or understand the underlying causes of the disease. With a PhD, I could at least continue my work, teach, and maybe even incorporate my love of video games into my neuroscience research. It was a good plan.

Two days ago, I got a call from the admissions department at one of the schools where I was waitlisted. They wanted to know if I was still interested, and I responded enthusiastically. I never really expected to be getting a call like that one. Yesterday morning, I gave them a call back. I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I needed to ask about potential scheduling issues, just in case. The woman I'd been speaking to told me that, although they don't normally tell people about admissions decisions over the phone, mine was a special case. I'd been accepted, and my official letter should be arriving in the mail any day now.

So why is my case an exception? Well, I needed to be told about the admissions decision as soon as possible because c|asses start July 28. That gives me about 2 weeks to find a place to live, get financial aid in order, and move my entire life to Erie, Pennsylvania. It's exciting and utterly terrifying at the same time. I also feel terrible for my boss, who was expecting me to work through at least August. That gives me about a week to get everyone else in the lab trained on the tasks that I'm responsible for. I was supposed to have two months.

So you may not see a lot of me around the site for a while. I'll still be here, performing my moderator-type duties, but it'll most likely be behind the scenes stuff. I'm utterly at a loss for how to describe what I'm feeling. You never really know how to react when you find out that one of your dreams is coming true. The fine folks at GameSpot have already given me that opportunity once when they agreed to let me test my mettle at reviewing games. If things had gone just the slightest bit differently, and moving to California had been a feasible option for me, I'd be on an entirely different career path, living an entirely different dream. And that would have been amazing. But working freelance for a great site like this one and going to medical school is more than I ever really could have wanted.