Undergraduate / Acquired knowledge in practice - My first hospital visits as a Medical Assistant student [2]

Prompt: Considering your lifetime goals, discuss how your current and future academic and extra-curricular activities might help you achieve your goals.

My Essay:
It was a wednesday. It was cold and wet outside. It was our first day of clinicals as Medical Assistant students. I was so nervous that I was shaking. It was the day, the moment, where our past three years of high school came together. The moment where we put our acquired knowledge to practice. I was afraid that I would forget something important, or become so nervous that I would not be able to effectively communicate. However, after arriving at the hospital, I eased up. I became even more at ease after every hospital visit; By the third time, I was no longer nervous. In fact, I was looking forward to it all. The more I fed, bathed, changed diapers, checked blood sugars etc, It was definitive that I would be a nurse. No doubt.

In 2011, our family officially moved from New Jersey to Texas. By that time, I was to start high school but before we came, my stepdad had been speaking to colleagues about good schools in the area. He was set on sending me to a different high school than the one I am attending now. However, I could not be enrolled because it was such a popular school. So, I was enrolled in Medical Academy with the intentions of transferring to my stepdad's first choice (both are high schools specialized in educating future health professionals'). Nonetheless, during a summer freshman orientation program I learned about the different senior programs such as, Medical Assisting, Phlebotomy, and EMT-basic. Honestly, I was not sure if the medical field was even where I wanted to be, but I knew the uniforms looked nice. I also knew that even if I wanted to enter a different field, I would get a good education and a possible job during college.

Our freshman and sophomore course sequence is set and stone. Our health science classes taught me about the different healthcare fields, the anatomy of the human body, and medical terminology. By junior year, we could pick which AP science class we wanted to take. I chose AP chemistry because I knew I wanted to take AP biology and it was advised that I take chemistry before that. I did not excel in that class, but I still feel prepared for it. It was also, during junior year that I really started looking into nursing and all its glory. Nurse midwifery was perfect because I had always been interested in women's health, ever since my mom was pregnant with my sister and her sister was diagnosed with endometriosis. Towards the end of junior year, I was brought in to pick two more electives. I chose AP statistics because it was a recommended class according to the college board website for people interested in nursing as was AP biology.

I chose those classes while keeping in mind that it would be going on to college to pursue nursing. I did not choose to go to this school (apparently, neither did many of my classmates), but I chose to stay. I chose to open my mind to what is out there in medicine. I chose to research the careers that interested me. I chose medical assisting because I knew that it would tell me if nursing would be for me, and I strongly believe it is for me. I do not just want to be a nurse, but I want to further my education and become a midwife/women's' health NP. My high school gave me opportunities to see the healthcare world before I could even be a part of it. And I know that if my mom and stepdad had never met, then I would have never been in Texas. I would have been stuck at a regular high school, taking regular classes, so when I look at my life now, and the way things have played out I know that nursing is not only for me, but my calling.