Hi everyone, I have copied the first draft of my personal statement for medical school below. I have omitted names for privacy but please be as honest as you can be when reviewing this essay. I plan on reviewing it in a few days with fresh eyes but suggestions and recommendations from third parties is greatly appreciated. In the past, I have been told I ramble without hitting my point and I want to avoid that, so please be on the lookout for that. I would also like to add that English is not my first language so please let me know if any phrase or sentence is written poorly. Corrections would be greatly appreciated!
PROMPT:
Why do I want to be a doctor? It used to be that I just wanted to follow in my parents' footsteps but eventually I realized that was not good enough and I knew I needed to really think about it so like any student, I procrastinated. I knew I always loved helping people, it's why I chose to work as a tutor, a Teaching Assistant and a Resident Assistant at the University yet I kept putting off answering the question until my sophomore year at the University - the year I took the EMT course. The class was tedious and a sometimes confidence breaking year-long commitment and I took it during my worst semester. I had started working three on-campus jobs and got infected with Strep Throat and Mono and I ended up switching my major to Chemistry. Throughout the fall semester, I asked myself, "Is this really worth it? Do I really want to be a doctor?". I was scared, I thought that if I couldn't handle this, there's no way in hell I could handle medical school and my passion and zeal to become a doctor began to waver and I knew they began to waver because they never had a strong enough foundation to begin with.
I did poorly that semester, I went home for Christmas break wondering "How am I going to manage next year? Will my GPA ever recover?" and I thought about giving up my dreams on becoming a doctor. It was time to seriously think about why I wanted to become a doctor. I continued to shadow Dr. Doctor in the hope that some part of her daily routine would inspire me. Eventually, something did.
A 24-year-old pregnant female [8 months along] was sent to the clinic by a private practice physician for high blood pressure. She revealed she had been in and out of hospitals and multiple doctor's offices for her high blood pressure for the better part of the previous 6 months of her pregnancy, having gone to numerous specialists with no success. Eventually, the doctors had given up on her. She was assigned to Dr. Doctor and I was able to bear witness to one of the most impressive feats of diagnosis I had ever seen. With a fresh set of eyes, Dr. Doctor was able to identify that the woman presented with early signs of kidney failure and was determined to help her. She took the patient's history and went to the nurses' lounge and got a white-board and wrote down everything she knew about the patient [I thought this was something that only happened on House]. Recognizing that the high blood pressure had been the most persistent symptom, Dr. Doctor focused her attention on that. She began thinking back to what she had learned, writing down any and every disease and disorder she could think of that could cause high blood pressure during pregnancy. Afterwards, she eliminated some using the patient's history and began to underline the ones she thought the patient was at risk for. Eventually she had narrowed the list down to 5 possible causes. She ran the tests for each one and the patient tested positive for Lupus. It was an impossible diagnosis, lupus during pregnancy had an incidence rate of 0.00005% in Third World Country, yet Dr. Doctor was able to identify it as one of the five most likely causes of the patient's high blood pressure. The woman began to cry, not because she was sad about her diagnosis, but because she was relieved to finally know why she was sick. It was in that moment I realized why I wanted to be a doctor and why I knew I would love it. I wanted to be a doctor because I love helping people and I knew I would love it because it's the same reason I loved Organic Chemistry. It was a puzzle. In Organic Chemistry, I loved being able to determine a compound's structure using Mass Spectroscopy, IR and NMR. Synthetic schemes made me happier than a child in a candy store. It's also why I loved being a tutor and a teaching assistant: both were forms of problem-solving; a good teacher finds the most effective way to convey information to students.
Medicine and puzzles are arguably in the same vein. Diagnosis itself is a puzzle, where doctors can solve it one piece at a time - for the most part. Signs and symptoms are the clues allowing you to eliminate possibilities until only a few remain. Then all that is left is to test and solve the puzzle. Dr. Doctor revealed to me that this kind of approach to diagnosis happens frequently and was a common part of her job. So, I was 're-imbued' with a zeal to continue my path to becoming a doctor, and I started the next year with a passion I had not felt in a while. I ended up on the Dean's List that semester while doing the EMT course. Any stress I may have felt during my classes, I knew I could overcome, because I had a good reason for doing it, one I wholeheartedly believed in. That year, I eventually began working as an EMT which served to reaffirm my passion for patient care and diagnosis. Since then, I have never questioned myself, because I know this is what I'm meant to do.
PROMPT:
Why do you want to be a doctor?
Why do I want to be a doctor? It used to be that I just wanted to follow in my parents' footsteps but eventually I realized that was not good enough and I knew I needed to really think about it so like any student, I procrastinated. I knew I always loved helping people, it's why I chose to work as a tutor, a Teaching Assistant and a Resident Assistant at the University yet I kept putting off answering the question until my sophomore year at the University - the year I took the EMT course. The class was tedious and a sometimes confidence breaking year-long commitment and I took it during my worst semester. I had started working three on-campus jobs and got infected with Strep Throat and Mono and I ended up switching my major to Chemistry. Throughout the fall semester, I asked myself, "Is this really worth it? Do I really want to be a doctor?". I was scared, I thought that if I couldn't handle this, there's no way in hell I could handle medical school and my passion and zeal to become a doctor began to waver and I knew they began to waver because they never had a strong enough foundation to begin with.
I did poorly that semester, I went home for Christmas break wondering "How am I going to manage next year? Will my GPA ever recover?" and I thought about giving up my dreams on becoming a doctor. It was time to seriously think about why I wanted to become a doctor. I continued to shadow Dr. Doctor in the hope that some part of her daily routine would inspire me. Eventually, something did.
A 24-year-old pregnant female [8 months along] was sent to the clinic by a private practice physician for high blood pressure. She revealed she had been in and out of hospitals and multiple doctor's offices for her high blood pressure for the better part of the previous 6 months of her pregnancy, having gone to numerous specialists with no success. Eventually, the doctors had given up on her. She was assigned to Dr. Doctor and I was able to bear witness to one of the most impressive feats of diagnosis I had ever seen. With a fresh set of eyes, Dr. Doctor was able to identify that the woman presented with early signs of kidney failure and was determined to help her. She took the patient's history and went to the nurses' lounge and got a white-board and wrote down everything she knew about the patient [I thought this was something that only happened on House]. Recognizing that the high blood pressure had been the most persistent symptom, Dr. Doctor focused her attention on that. She began thinking back to what she had learned, writing down any and every disease and disorder she could think of that could cause high blood pressure during pregnancy. Afterwards, she eliminated some using the patient's history and began to underline the ones she thought the patient was at risk for. Eventually she had narrowed the list down to 5 possible causes. She ran the tests for each one and the patient tested positive for Lupus. It was an impossible diagnosis, lupus during pregnancy had an incidence rate of 0.00005% in Third World Country, yet Dr. Doctor was able to identify it as one of the five most likely causes of the patient's high blood pressure. The woman began to cry, not because she was sad about her diagnosis, but because she was relieved to finally know why she was sick. It was in that moment I realized why I wanted to be a doctor and why I knew I would love it. I wanted to be a doctor because I love helping people and I knew I would love it because it's the same reason I loved Organic Chemistry. It was a puzzle. In Organic Chemistry, I loved being able to determine a compound's structure using Mass Spectroscopy, IR and NMR. Synthetic schemes made me happier than a child in a candy store. It's also why I loved being a tutor and a teaching assistant: both were forms of problem-solving; a good teacher finds the most effective way to convey information to students.
Medicine and puzzles are arguably in the same vein. Diagnosis itself is a puzzle, where doctors can solve it one piece at a time - for the most part. Signs and symptoms are the clues allowing you to eliminate possibilities until only a few remain. Then all that is left is to test and solve the puzzle. Dr. Doctor revealed to me that this kind of approach to diagnosis happens frequently and was a common part of her job. So, I was 're-imbued' with a zeal to continue my path to becoming a doctor, and I started the next year with a passion I had not felt in a while. I ended up on the Dean's List that semester while doing the EMT course. Any stress I may have felt during my classes, I knew I could overcome, because I had a good reason for doing it, one I wholeheartedly believed in. That year, I eventually began working as an EMT which served to reaffirm my passion for patient care and diagnosis. Since then, I have never questioned myself, because I know this is what I'm meant to do.