He held my hand, squeezing it tighter and tighter as the seconds seemed like hours. The blood of my fingers seems to have dissipated and the numbness started to set in. Sitting there, waiting with tears in my eyes. Not because of the pain in my hands but because of the pain he must feel. His body jerking uncontrollably, his eyes rolling back into his head and the blood rolling out of his mouth. "He's only 10 years old" I thought as a seizure ripped through his body. Home alone, I sat there not knowing what to do or if there was anything that anyone could do. At that moment I knew where my heart was leading me. The desire to be in the medical field was so palpable. With all my efforts I have strived to become a physician assistant. As the years with on the desire became stronger. The value of hard work, necessity of personal sacrifice, and importance of education have catalyzed both personal and professional growth from my humble roots in rural Louisiana. Living in a rural community as a young girl, seeing many people suffer from sicknesses that could have easily been cared for. People young and old, people near and dear to me. Like the 10 year old boy mentioned above, that was my brother. Yes I did say was. He had a seizure one day, fell into a swimming pool and died. I started my quest as a Medical Assistant. I spent most of my years working in areas of rural settings. I was fortunate to work with a team of physician assistants and other medical providers that was never to busy to teach me more. As I was learning in the medical field, I was so happy to be able to help and educate my family / neighborhood with simple things, like understanding their blood pressure, understanding the importance of the information / directions given to them by their family physician, and most importantly the importance of going to get a simple health check-up. Since 1992, when I first started in the medical field I have worked with different medical specialties from ENT, OBGYN, Pediatrics, Oncology, and even Urology, but my love and passion is still primary care/ family practice. I truly admire the career of being a Physician Assistant. The flexibility and versatility of the profession, being an autonomous professional, given quality care to patients and the ability to never stop learning.
Swillis, this is a very touching narrative essay about the development of your desire to become a physician assistant. However, without knowing what the personal essay prompt truly is, we will be unable to properly assist you. So we hope that you can post that information in this thread soon. That said, I would like to offer some comments about your essay based upon the existing information.
There must have been a compelling buildup of reasons for you to have decided to enter the physician assistant program. You should make mention of these in your essay. I am not sure if your original prompt requires it but I believe that the essay could use some information about your exposure to the rural settings and how that affected your desire to move from a Medical Assistant position to something higher. You need to discuss yourself on a more personal level. While this story is good, you need to develop the events leading up to this realization for you.
Information such as an introduction to your early beginnings and influences in the medical field, your Medical Assistant studies and exposure to patients, and even the way that you helped your own relatives their time of medical need will help to build up the scenario in the hospital room that you described. It is always best to give a backgrounder on yourself and what you will be discussing prior to launching into the tale that you told. After all, this is a personal essay, not a novel. So the rules of writing it are different. Although a little creativity, such as in your case, does not hurt :-)
