Admissions Essay - Medical School and Shopping
My mom and I are the type of women who refuse to spend too much money for quality clothing. We are admittedly shopaholics. Our escapades can last for days and my mother always outlasts me! Well, always does not last forever. One day, my mother and I were on one of our short safaris. She had been complaining of headaches but, ever the trooper, she insisted we go (1-Day Sale, of course!). When we reached our destination my mother was dizzy and her head was pounding. Worried, I ushered her into a local drug store, where we found one of those standing blood pressure machines. My mother gave me a weak smile as I turned to sit down and wait for the results. That's when I heard the crash. My mother and the machine were keeling over in a horrid cascade of mom, machine and medicine. I rushed to her aid and desperately tried to keep her from completely falling onto the ground. My mother passed out due to extremely high blood pressure and I could do nothing about it. Throughout my academic career, I had been sure of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life-be a doctor. I was not emotionally committed to this endeavor until that eight grade year when my mother and I were helpless.
Ever since that day, I have been on a mission. Determined to learn more, I actively researched my family's medical history. Finding that both sides record hypertension and cardiovascular disease as problems, I decided to delve deeper. This time I found that African Americans as a group historically suffer from those same complications. The more I learned, the more I fell in love with the intricacies of the circular system. Things such as, the components of the blood and their different duties, the specialized characteristics of cardiac muscles and the blood's bicarbonate buffer system all fascinated me as I traveled through course work. Book knowledge turned to field knowledge as I decided to pursue other avenues of understanding. I worked with the Red Cross Blood Drive in high school; carrying blood, helping the nurses and learning more. I interviewed three doctors; a cardiologist, an internist and an obstetrician-gynecologist to find out more about the profession and what it takes to be an M.D. Although the internist tried to dissuade me from pursuing he practice, I gleaned the good and the bad from all three doctors and judged for myself the validity of what I wanted to do.
"Early Explorers of the Western Hemisphere." World Almanac & Book of Facts 2000, 1999, p456.
Koning, Hans, and Bill Bigelow. Columbus: His Enterprise : Exploding the Myth. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991.
5.) Thomson, Judith. A Defense of Abortion. In Philosophy and Public Affairs Vol 1 No. 1 1984.
In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she uses the structure of her poem and rhetoric as concrete representation of her abstract beliefs about death to comfort and encourage readers into accepting Death when He comes. The underlying theme that can be extracted from this poem is that death is just a new beginning. Dickinson deftly reassures her readers of this with innovative organization and management, life-like rhyme and rhythm, subtle but meaningful use of symbolism, and ironic metaphors.
From five years old up I knew I wanted to be a nurse practitioner. When I was around 13 years old my mom got very sick which had her in and out of the hospital, this only pushed me further in the direction of becoming a nurse practitioner. I would always see nurses in and out of my mom’s room when she was in the hospital, some were nice others were not. I always tell myself, “You’re going to be one of the nice ones, the one that makes the whole ordeal just a little bit better.”
In conclusion, a career as a Cardiovascular Surgeon is indefatigable and often referred to as a road best left forgotten, but sometimes the forgotten road can lead greatness, for greatness isn’t handed out but rather is achieved. And what is greater than giving another person hope for the future, than by giving them a future and struggling through life in order to be the person to give it to them. Pope Paul VI said, “All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.”
Much has been said about Emily Dickinson’s mystifying poetry and private life, especially during the years 1860-63. Allegedly it was during these years that the poetess, at the most prolific phase of her career, withdrew from society, began to wear her “characteristic” white dress and suffered a series of psychotic episodes. Dickinson tended to “theatricalize” herself by speaking through a host of personae in her poems and by “fictionalizing” her inner life as a gothic romance (Gilbert 584). Believing that a poem is “the best words in the best order” (to quote S.T. Coleridge) and that all the poems stemming from a single consciousness bring to surface different aspects / manifestations of the same personal mythology, I will firstly disregard biographical details in my interpretation of Dickinson’s poems 378, 341 and 280 and secondly place them in a sort of “continuum” (starting with 378 and ending with 280) to show how they attempt to describe a “plunge” into the Unconscious and a lapse into madness (I refrain from using the term “journey,” for it implies a “telos,” a goal which, whether unattainable or not, is something non-existent in the poems in question). Faced with the problem of articulating and concretizing inner psychological states, Dickinson created a totally new poetic discourse which lacks a transcendental signified and thus can dramatize the three stages of a (narrated) mental collapse: existential despair, withdrawal from the world of the senses and “death” of consciousness.
Although I had always considered medicine a potential career from hearing my mother’s frequent inspirational recounts as a dentist, it was my volunteer work that awakened my sense of responsibility to the world and my desire to help patients heal. As a volunteer at the UCSF Medical Center, I dashed through corridors with a patient rushing to find his wife in the maternity ward, minutes before she delivered. Witnessing the newborn with the family was a heartening experience, and fostering trust with patients at UCSF Medical has enriched my life immeasurably. Such interactions enhanced my ability to build strong interpersonal bonds, and I was awarded the HEARTS Award from UCSF for exemplary patient care. The hospital became my second home and I realized that I might enjoy working in a health care setting.
I can still remember that small enclosed, claustrophobic room containing two armed chairs and an old, brown, paisley print couch my dad and I were sitting on when he told me. “The doctors said there was little to no chance that your mother is going to make it through this surgery.” Distressed, I didn’t know what to think; I could hardly comprehend those words. And now I was supposed to just say goodbye? As I exited that small room, my father directed me down the hospital hallway where I saw my mother in the hospital bed. She was unconscious with tubes entering her throat and nose keeping her alive. I embraced her immobile body for what felt like forever and told her “I love you” for what I believed was the last time. I thought of how horrific it was seeing my mother that way, how close we were, how my life was going to be without her, and how my little sisters were clueless about what was going on. After saying my farewells, I was brought downstairs to the hospital’s coffee shop where a million things were running
...epersonalized. Although not every patient is easy to deal with and doctors are under colossal pressure, by inspiring students with a possible future in the medical field to get involved with type of community service early we can ameliorate the distressing situation. Coming into contact with, speaking to, and intimately understanding these incredible individuals can dramatically alter one’s perspective and ensure treatment with self respect and dignity. I strongly believe in this notion of early involvement. My changed view coupled with my future medical training in college will allow me to be a figure to emulate and hopefully inspire others to follow this path. By embarking on this monumental journey mankind has the opportunity to shape history and enrich the lives of others while personally experiencing the most rewarding of all endeavors: helping someone in need.
I had known for years that I wanted to work in the health care field, but I always believed it would be as a doctor. I watched for the first few years of my brother’s life as he struggled with different health challenges such as being born premature, having croup and breathing difficulty, and speech impairment. Watching my brother struggle and then being able to overcome these difficulties, as well as seeing other children around him who were not as fortunate, really pushed me even at a young age to make a difference. My family, both immediate and extended, were very supportive, and I felt a real positive push towards working hard to achieve that goal of working in health care. In high school, I was fortunate enough to do a cooperative placement at the Peterborough Regional Health Center’s Intensive Care Unit. Through observing rounds and being in the medical setting, I truly knew this is where I wanted to
Photosynthesis is, “the process by which plants convert light energy from the Sun into chemical energy in the form of carbohydrates” thus producing, “food for all living organisms, directly or indirectly” (Zheng). Photosynthesis has been examined in thousands of different ways. Many of these experiments include studying the rate of photosynthesis and pigment accumulation by obtaining plants and then stressing their light and nutrient intake (Okunlola and Adekunle). Photosynthetic pigments reflect and absorb different wavelengths of visible light based off their polarity. In this experiment, we studied photosynthetic pigments, first, by determining polarity and then, by measuring the amount of light of a given wavelength that a pigment absorbs. We used two methods in this experiment, chromatography and spectrophotometry. Chromatography “is a method used to separate mixtures of substances into their components” (lab book) and spectrophotometry is the use of a spectrophotometer to measure transmittance of light through a liquid. We used our knowledge of polarity to predict that since the least polar pigments move the most, pigment 1 is chlorophyll b, pigment 2 is chlorophyll a, pigment 3 is an anthocyanin, pigment 4 is a xanthophyll, and since most polar pigments move the least, pigment 5 is
Dickinson, Emily. “Because I could not stop for Death.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and writing. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia. Saddle River. Pearson Education, 2013. 777. Print.
Once upon a time, it seems, physicians were wise and good, and medicine was an art. That's the feeling I get reading from the Chahar Maqala, tales from a time when doctors diagnosed lovesick princes from a urine sample, a pulse, and a review of local geography.
My passion for medicine has been fueled and tested through these experiences. I believe that there is much that can be improved in terms of equality and treatment. I hope that through my future work and study, others will not have to face a similar situation as I did, but will have hope and promise for a better, healthier life.