Undergraduate /
"a medical education" - Why Drexel College of Medicine- BS/MD prompt [6]
15. Essay of Intent: (Please limit to one Page)
Tell the Admissions Committee why you are applying to the joint program(s) with Drexel University College of Medicine. Be sure to
explain why you want be a physician and more specifically why you want to obtain your medical education at Drexel University College of
Medicine. If you are applying to any of our accelerated joint programs (i.e. those with only three years of college), be sure to explain why
you are pursuing that particular option.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" It's a question I've been asked by adults throughout childhood, always answered with a poorly pronounced rendition of the title "pediatrician." I usually earned the response, "Good for you," followed by the "Your little girl has so much ambition!" directed at my mother. And so, at an early age, I was taught that physician was ranked highly on the hierarchy of professions.
This urge to enter the field of medicine stems from my history of doctors, whose offices I was rushed in and out of during the first six years of my life. A few months after birth, I was diagnosed with chronic eczema and a number of food that drastically limited my diet. These conditions may not seem like the most severe, but to my family a few episodes of anaphylactic shock and their child's daily suffering led them to embark on an intense search for a treatment or trial that would alleviate my allergies. Their prayers were answered in the form of a visit to pediatric allergist and immunologist, Dr. Hugh Sampson, and only two years later, most of my allergies and my skin condition resolved themselves. Though doctors explain this "growing out" of my conditions with similar stories that remain medically unexplained, my family attributes it to the physician who we dubbed "the best doctor in the world."
In short, my reason for choosing a career in the medical field is not entirely for medicine. I have a great interest in the life sciences and the mechanisms of the human body, but also in the human ability to heal itself. Hope is a strange concept; it is a fabrication of the human mind as a survival instinct. For my family who could not understand the tests, treatments, and procedures being performed-or even the infirmity behind it all- hope came from the ability to entrust their child's welfare to another individual, a physician. In my opinion, "the best doctor in the world" indicates the ability to inspire optimism vital to a patient's healing. It is not a title that validates a physician's standing, but the sense for each patient that no higher quality of care exists. Looking to a career as a health professional, I do not aspire to a maximum diagnosis or cure rate, but to the ability to create the possibility that patients and families will believe in a recovery.
Through a medical education at the Drexel University College of Medicine, the opportunity to practice "the best doctor in the world" will be the basis of my training. Drexel recognizes the necessity for growth not only as a medical professional, but also as a "healer," introducing students into the clinical realm of medicine only a few weeks into medical school. This threshold between theory and reality, a point that occurs as early as the fourth year of tertiary education as a student of an Accelerated Program, cannot exist any sooner in the development of a physician. I feel that my own journey with patient interaction began as a patient myself and has continued ever since. My hope is that through my undergraduate education, it will remain uninterrupted. A joint program in medicine enhances that prospect, encouraging the expansion of student time devoted to pre-medical opportunities with the assurance of such a humanistic medical education ahead. And through an Accelerated program, I will dive back into the community that had originally inspired me in only seven years.
For the primary years of medical school, Drexel's Program for Integrated Learning serves as an immense resource in my mind, producing a physician whose mind is not occupied solely by anatomical facts, but more important, by the significance of each. Learning to select critical information, materials and resources for the diagnosis and treatment of an existent patient is the ideal education for me, as an aspiring physician whose priority is the experience of the patient. There is no other environment where I would rather realize my goals, where a clinical physician's future could look any brighter, and where comparable resources for a medical education exist.
All suggestions are welcome! My biggest problem is that I feel like I spent a majority of the question answer why I want to be a doctor, and then added the last three questions in the last two paragraphs. Do you think it's not balanced enough, or should I leave that?
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my essay!
