People in class that I admire

We recently completed a survey of our class, which turned up some interesting statistics. I knew already there were a few people that I really looked up to, and have written about some of their accomplishments in the past (including some who are Olympians, politicians, media pundits and more), but after reading the survey results, I now know there are a lot more. Here's a few:

• The people in my class who took the MCAT more than twice (my worst nightmare).
  9 people.

• The people in my class who applied to medical school more than 3 times.
  38 people, including 4 who applied 5 or more times. Wow... that's persistence.

• The people in my class who are responsible for balancing med school studying and classes like the rest of us, but on top of that, have children and are responsible for cooking for their family, helping their kids with homework, and playing chauffeur mom or dad to soccer and dance lessons.
  10 people.

• The girl in my class who continued to come to class even though she was 9 months pregnant - her water broke in class, in fact - and she proceeded to return to class two days after her baby was born. The faculty gave her the chance to take a year off and resume classes at this point next year, to which she responded, "Maternity leave, shmaternity leave." Talk about a trooper.

• The people in my class who have husbands or wives in different provinces and are doing a long-distance marriage for a few months until their significant other can move to where our school is.
  Not sure how many people. A number of the long-distance relationships ended because of the distance... the marriages, from what I know, are still holding on strong.

• The people in my class who have >$50,000 in debt already.
  8 people.

• The people at the opposite end of the spectrum who had full-fledged successful careers going, and left those careers knowing that they could make a bigger difference by taking a pay cut and becoming a physician.

• The girl in my class who earned the 99th percentile for her MCAT scores.

• The people in my class who have the nerve to e-mail our class president or faculty about problems rather than approach individual students themselves (this is my sarcastic portion of the entry, which deserves a post in itself...maybe another time).

• The girl in our class who just earned her Canadian citizenship.

• The girl in our class who could have gotten into medical school in a European country "by sending in an application, transcript, and a bribe," but instead came to North America where bribes don't get you into medical school (at least we like to tell ourselves that).

• The guy in our class who is a fully-qualified medical doctor in Russia, but found out that it would be easier to get licenced in Canada by re-taking medical school. That's commitment.

• The government (ok, another sarcastic entry here, I know the government isn't in my class but anyways...) who decides to allow a fully-qualified Russian doctor to jump the queue for immigration to Canada, but doesn't let him qualify in Canada even though he is entirely competent (more about this here).

These are just a few of the incredible people that I am surrounded by. What a privilege.