Traveling back in time...
I've been keeping a huge secret from you. It's stretched over two weeks and a few days, so read through the timeline:
March 2: I landed back in Dubai after attending the interview at the medical school of the University of Southampton in southern England. They told me they'd reply in six weeks. On the same day, I got an e-mail from another university's med school - Newcastle University, up in the north of England. They're so close to Scotland that they've got cute Scottish accents. Anyways, they wanted to interview me and the lady with whom I was corresponding told me to pick a date and time between March 12 and 16.
March 2 to March 6: I tried to argue with the people at Newcastle that I had just returned from the UK and couldn't possibly afford [not because of money, but because of time] to fly 3000 miles once again for a 20-minute interview. They told me that they had just looked at my application and had therefore invited me for an interview after I'd already come back from England. I tried to talk them into having the British Council in Dubai interview me on their behalf so their security concerns could be put to rest and I could save myself a trip to England. Nope. They didn't relent and the ball was in their court. Finally, I gave in and agreed to be interviewed on Friday, March 16. I picked Friday because it's the weekend here so I could go there then, get interviewed and head back home the same day and so reach home before the weekend ended... all so I wouldn't have to miss any school work. The things I do for grades!
March 7: The University of Edinburgh [not related to this story] rejected me. Shit.
March 8: One day after the University of Edinburgh dealt a blow [which didn't hurt that much, admittedly], the one university I had some hope in, the University of Southampton rejected me. That was a slap in the face.
March 9: I booked British Airways tickets to Newcastle through Heathrow. Specified a vegetarian meal. I was planning to travel alone.
March 10 to 15: Spent much of the week worrying and being ill, hoping the fever would go down before the journey and the interview. Booked Ammi's tickets on her insistence after she got a UK visa stuck to her passport.
March 16: Set out for Heathrow from Dubai. The first bad omen didn't take long to show up - the sole of the formal shoes I was wearing started tearing open and the sponge material started to stick to the tiles of the airport. As it became more and more difficult to walk, I finally told Ammi about it and she bought me new shoes from the airport's duty free shop. Fugging crazy.
The second bad omen came after the security check [for which there was a monstrous queue] at Heathrow - I realized that my wallet was not in my back pocket. I searched all over our tiny pieces of luggage, but in vain.. wallet was gone. Either somebody had stolen it or I'd left it in the aircraft. "Jaan ka sadqah," Ammi said. Charity for [the safety of] your life. And we moved on.
We hopped onto a plane to Newcastle. Once we got there, we took the metro to this place called the Haymarket from where we braved the 7°C cold wind and walked around a kilometer to the Catherine Cookson Building whose name nobody on campus could recognize - only when we said 'medical school' did people understand and point us in the right direction.
In the building, I quickly slipped into a cubicle in the men's room. I changed from my casual travel clothes to the formal white shirt and the formal butt-hugging black pants and a red-black striped tie that I had packed into Ammi's bag. The cubicle was small, but man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I dabbed some attar [traditional Arabic perfume] on myself and Ammi dabbed some behind my ears.
I was taken for a tour around the humongous med school by this girl called Lucy. She was really nice to me and wasted her whole lunch hour showing me around the place. The David Shaw Lecture hall is eye-poppingly big. Lucy showed me some of her work, told me stuff about the course and how things work around there. Her pre-interview information was really useful because I used it to ask intelligent questions about the course in the interview.
The interview itself was quite a calm experience. One of the interviewers was an Indian pediatrician. The other one had a priceless Jim Carrey smile which kept me from getting nervous. They asked me all sorts of questions like, why Newcastle, tell me about Best Buddies, tell me about your work experience, why Newcastle again, what do you do in your free time (!!), what are the qualities of a good doctor, what do you want to specialize in and such. Overall, the interview went pretty well - I got stuck in only one place, but I quickly apologized and started over. I still had a strong feeling that I wasn't going to get accepted here. They told me that I should expect a reply in two weeks.
After the interview, we walked back to the metro station, went back to the airport and flew to Heathrow from where we flew back home to Dubai. Stayed in England for a total of 15 hours. Never done THAT before.
March 17: Arrived in Dubai.
March 17 to 20: Longest four days of my life, full of nauseous feelings, uneasiness, daydreams, pessimism, optimism, realism, searching for alternatives. The only distraction from all this was school where I was my normal self once again, but just temporarily.
Today, March 20: I came back home and was reluctant to open my inbox. They had told me they'd reply in two weeks, but even Southampton had told me they'd reply in six weeks and had rejected me a little more than a week after my interview. A premature e-mail from UCAS saying that my track had been updated could only mean that I had been rejected. Saturday and Sunday had been the weekend in the UK, so they would start making the decisions on Monday and they'd tell me that I'm rejected by Tuesday. That's why I was dreading opening my inbox today.
When I opened it, there was an e-mail from UCAS sitting right at the top. Bastard. I didn't bother clicking on it and reading the e-mail. I went straight to my UCAS track and upon logging in I was greeted with the message, "You must reply to your offers as soon as possible." instead of the usual "Your application has been sent for consideration." OK. First good omen in days! I went to the page where my university choices are listed and I saw this:
Olé! I got a conditional offer!! Their conditions are pretty usual - get As in both Chemistry and Biology. But woo hoo! After three rejections, this is pretty much ecstasy.
I'd like to take a moment and thank those who prayed for me and thought about me. I know I don't really give credit to the power of prayer, but thanks!
"Fa'inna ma'a al-'usray yusra. Inna ma'a al-'usray yusra."
"So, surely, with difficulty there is relief. Surely, with difficulty there is relief."
-- The Qur'an, Surah 94 [Solace], verses 5-6.
March 2: I landed back in Dubai after attending the interview at the medical school of the University of Southampton in southern England. They told me they'd reply in six weeks. On the same day, I got an e-mail from another university's med school - Newcastle University, up in the north of England. They're so close to Scotland that they've got cute Scottish accents. Anyways, they wanted to interview me and the lady with whom I was corresponding told me to pick a date and time between March 12 and 16.
March 2 to March 6: I tried to argue with the people at Newcastle that I had just returned from the UK and couldn't possibly afford [not because of money, but because of time] to fly 3000 miles once again for a 20-minute interview. They told me that they had just looked at my application and had therefore invited me for an interview after I'd already come back from England. I tried to talk them into having the British Council in Dubai interview me on their behalf so their security concerns could be put to rest and I could save myself a trip to England. Nope. They didn't relent and the ball was in their court. Finally, I gave in and agreed to be interviewed on Friday, March 16. I picked Friday because it's the weekend here so I could go there then, get interviewed and head back home the same day and so reach home before the weekend ended... all so I wouldn't have to miss any school work. The things I do for grades!
March 7: The University of Edinburgh [not related to this story] rejected me. Shit.
March 8: One day after the University of Edinburgh dealt a blow [which didn't hurt that much, admittedly], the one university I had some hope in, the University of Southampton rejected me. That was a slap in the face.
March 9: I booked British Airways tickets to Newcastle through Heathrow. Specified a vegetarian meal. I was planning to travel alone.
March 10 to 15: Spent much of the week worrying and being ill, hoping the fever would go down before the journey and the interview. Booked Ammi's tickets on her insistence after she got a UK visa stuck to her passport.
March 16: Set out for Heathrow from Dubai. The first bad omen didn't take long to show up - the sole of the formal shoes I was wearing started tearing open and the sponge material started to stick to the tiles of the airport. As it became more and more difficult to walk, I finally told Ammi about it and she bought me new shoes from the airport's duty free shop. Fugging crazy.
The second bad omen came after the security check [for which there was a monstrous queue] at Heathrow - I realized that my wallet was not in my back pocket. I searched all over our tiny pieces of luggage, but in vain.. wallet was gone. Either somebody had stolen it or I'd left it in the aircraft. "Jaan ka sadqah," Ammi said. Charity for [the safety of] your life. And we moved on.
We hopped onto a plane to Newcastle. Once we got there, we took the metro to this place called the Haymarket from where we braved the 7°C cold wind and walked around a kilometer to the Catherine Cookson Building whose name nobody on campus could recognize - only when we said 'medical school' did people understand and point us in the right direction.
In the building, I quickly slipped into a cubicle in the men's room. I changed from my casual travel clothes to the formal white shirt and the formal butt-hugging black pants and a red-black striped tie that I had packed into Ammi's bag. The cubicle was small, but man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I dabbed some attar [traditional Arabic perfume] on myself and Ammi dabbed some behind my ears.
I was taken for a tour around the humongous med school by this girl called Lucy. She was really nice to me and wasted her whole lunch hour showing me around the place. The David Shaw Lecture hall is eye-poppingly big. Lucy showed me some of her work, told me stuff about the course and how things work around there. Her pre-interview information was really useful because I used it to ask intelligent questions about the course in the interview.
The interview itself was quite a calm experience. One of the interviewers was an Indian pediatrician. The other one had a priceless Jim Carrey smile which kept me from getting nervous. They asked me all sorts of questions like, why Newcastle, tell me about Best Buddies, tell me about your work experience, why Newcastle again, what do you do in your free time (!!), what are the qualities of a good doctor, what do you want to specialize in and such. Overall, the interview went pretty well - I got stuck in only one place, but I quickly apologized and started over. I still had a strong feeling that I wasn't going to get accepted here. They told me that I should expect a reply in two weeks.
After the interview, we walked back to the metro station, went back to the airport and flew to Heathrow from where we flew back home to Dubai. Stayed in England for a total of 15 hours. Never done THAT before.
March 17: Arrived in Dubai.
March 17 to 20: Longest four days of my life, full of nauseous feelings, uneasiness, daydreams, pessimism, optimism, realism, searching for alternatives. The only distraction from all this was school where I was my normal self once again, but just temporarily.
Today, March 20: I came back home and was reluctant to open my inbox. They had told me they'd reply in two weeks, but even Southampton had told me they'd reply in six weeks and had rejected me a little more than a week after my interview. A premature e-mail from UCAS saying that my track had been updated could only mean that I had been rejected. Saturday and Sunday had been the weekend in the UK, so they would start making the decisions on Monday and they'd tell me that I'm rejected by Tuesday. That's why I was dreading opening my inbox today.
When I opened it, there was an e-mail from UCAS sitting right at the top. Bastard. I didn't bother clicking on it and reading the e-mail. I went straight to my UCAS track and upon logging in I was greeted with the message, "You must reply to your offers as soon as possible." instead of the usual "Your application has been sent for consideration." OK. First good omen in days! I went to the page where my university choices are listed and I saw this:
Olé! I got a conditional offer!! Their conditions are pretty usual - get As in both Chemistry and Biology. But woo hoo! After three rejections, this is pretty much ecstasy.
I'd like to take a moment and thank those who prayed for me and thought about me. I know I don't really give credit to the power of prayer, but thanks!
"Fa'inna ma'a al-'usray yusra. Inna ma'a al-'usray yusra."
"So, surely, with difficulty there is relief. Surely, with difficulty there is relief."
-- The Qur'an, Surah 94 [Solace], verses 5-6.