Disturbia

Oh god. I thought I had left my awkwardly embarrassing days behind me.

Clearly I was mistaken.

Every year around this time, the M4s hold info sessions on the specialties that they've matched into to give us lemmings some guidance. I went to the pediatrics one this week, and it was good. Great, in fact. While it was definitely geared more towards the current third years - how to apply, how to interview, what to do after the interview, how to not freak out after the interview - it was good hearing everything anyways. Even if I'm more concerned about boards than anything right now. Oh god, that reminds me, I have to do laundry. Or buy more underwear.

But I digress.

So I know two of the pediatric M4s pretty well. One is my roommate (hi Lisa!), and the other is a friend from undergrad (hi, Ed!). Afterwards, Ed told me to send him an email if I had any specific M2 questions regarding peds. Which, of course I did - but I felt too self-conscious at the actual session to ask.

So I sat down the next morning and basically poured my heart out. How do I know if peds is right for me? Will I figure it out third year on the actual rotation, or will I know while working on other things? Is it a way of life? Does it depend on how you work? Is it more than that? Am I missing the big picture? What if it turns out that I don't want to go into peds?! Even though I've been talking about pediatrics since high school?! Oh god, I'm having a quarter-life crisis right now. GIVE ME THE ANSWER - WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE.

And even though it seems as though I'm exaggerating about the one-sided email freak-out session, I'm totally not. I then went on to tell him about all the flaws I saw in my resume, and asked a whole bunch of questions about what I could do to become a stronger applicant.

Because my application is weak sauce right now. For reals. Not for fakes. And as you can tell, I'm kinda freaking out about it.

And then I pressed send. Without proofreading anything. Not caring about the multitude of tangents and run-on sentences that were everywhere in my email. The way I saw it, Ed's a friend. He'll understand. He'll read through it and know what I'm asking for. And then he'll tell me that everything is going to be okay.

A couple hours passed. No reply.

Another couple hours passed. And then it popped up in my gmail. I opened it excitedly.

"Hey Michelle! Um, sorry, but I think you emailed the wrong Edward! This is Eddie, your fellow M2 classmate. Uh, I wish I could help you, but I don't know any more than you do. We'll be okay though.................. anyways, hope you can get in contact with the other Edward that you're trying to find!"

Oh my god.

Seriously, oh my god.

Turns out the Ed I was trying to email and the Eddie I ended up emailing share a last name that is different by only one letter. And I just let gmail fill in the email address for me and didn't even look at it twice.

But oh my god.

At least I now know that no one can truly die from embarassment, because if one could, I would have.

And no, I don't know Eddie well at all. But now he knows a whole heck of a lot about me and my insecurities. And my resume. And transcript. And exam scores.

Thank goodness it's spring break and I won't see Eddie in class for at least another three days. Although I'm hoping that when I do see him, the Earth will open up and swallow me whole. Is that too much to ask?