Just recently I decided to take a college day to The University of Mississippi. It has one of the best pharmacy schools in the United States and is also recognized for many other areas. The part of it that interested me was the Honors College, ranked in the top 3 honors colleges in the states by Reader’s Digest. Well here it is, my trip to Ole Miss and the things I learned there, the people I met, and the places I saw.

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Only a few hours away from leaving and I still haven’t printed any maps, ironed any clothes, and spark spark WAM the electricity goes out. This was one of the many times in my life where I regretted my habit of doing things at the last minute. With the electricity back in the morning, I hit MapQuest, print what I need, take a shower, iron my clothes, jump in the car, call my friend and we take off for Ole Miss. The ride to Ole Miss lasted hours and was full of interesting sights to see, including a few fields of cows and even a gas station every now and then! I started to wonder where I was going to end up at, the further and further we got the closer it seemed we got to the end of civilization. Finally after long hours of nothingness I was met with a Ole Miss entrance and minutes after I was there. The campus itself was like a mini-city of younger people. More accustomed to seeing smaller private universities, the campus of Ole Miss was extravagant. It was clean, lively, full of young individuals and occasionally I’d spot what looked like a professor carrying a bundle of books. I headed towards the visitors center and they directed us to the proper building, Martindale (it was basically the center of everything for anyone visiting). From there I learned that the honors tour had already begun 2 hours ago, so we decided to schedule our own mini tours with different guides. The first thing I noticed on arriving was that the staff was extremely kind and worked to fit their schedule into mine. We arrived at 10:00am and by 10:45am our tours and timings were all set. Our first tour or Information session was set at 1 P.M giving us around 2 hours to check the campus out. (By us I mean to a friend and I, I’ll refer to her as ‘H’ from now on). We walked around campus for around 45 minutes when I found ‘L’ a old high school friend of mine. He canceled a few of his meetings and took us to the honors college. As soon as I entered I saw a computer lab with very new desktops each paired with huge 21’ monitors, and free, unlimited printing, hehe. He introduced me to one of the biology professors. I was starting to get the ‘I want to be a surgeon’ feeling again after talking to the professor and seeing the resources available in the labs. Another thing I found interesting were the study rooms, some were as big as a corporate conference rooms, enough to seat 16 people and some as small as a personal lavatory. L explained that some students liked to study in larger areas and some in small confined areas which explained the many different study rooms…mm…yea. After seeing the honors college and different labs and classrooms for chemistry and biochemistry I headed back to Matindale for the info session. The session went by quickly as the recruiter, who explained that he wasn’t fat but instead just had a lot of ‘Love’, entertained us while answering hundreds of questions bye of course me. Finally after the presentation I met the much talked about ‘DSG’, just by looking at him I could tell he was one of those…enlightened people…he was the Dumbledore of Ole Miss, and yea so what If I did read Harry Potter. He introduced us to some of the top students in the college, each of them inspired me more. The rest of the story is pretty straight forward, tours after tours, meetings after meetings, and the ride back home which was full of adventure including me falling asleep almost the whole way back.

Basically at the end of the day, I am glad that I went to visit the college. I met a variety of people that gave me that final nudge to pursue my dreams of a surgeon. What inspires me at many time is listening to people who are higher then me and smarter then me. It inspires me to beat them and become better at what they are best at.

Oh yea I also went to see Saw IV, and being able to stand the gore in their without any problem assures me, surgery is the thing for me.

Med School here I come.