Tom Brown Application Essay

I wish I had taken the time to watch the squirrels. Instead, I was shivering in the 35 degree night in my poorly insulated survival shelter somewhere in the New York backcountry. Reading Tom Brown's field guide for wilderness survival had inspired me to test my newly learned skills on a three day survival hike, with eight campers looking to me for guidance. In high spirits after a root stew, we all crawled into our individual debris hut shelters for our first night buried in sticks and leaves. By 12am, my shivering affirmed that I had made a mistake. Laying in the miserable cold, I remembered what Tom Brown had said about watching the squirrels stuff their nests to the brim with insulation, and on the edge of hypothermia, quickly got out to

Though these individual situations were not easy and often did not go as planned, maintaining a curious and optimistic attitude in them encouraged the boys around me to preserver and allowed me to grow in my skills as a survivalist. With these attitudes presiding, even the most straining situations became opportunities to grow individually and serve others. In the same way, I see the chance to go to medical school as an opportunity to grow into an efficient and compassionate servant of others. I hope to emulate the compassion I have seen in the physicians I have worked with, who have sacrificed time and money for the sake of patients. In spite of the accomplishments and adventures these three days contained, Brown's simple advice to watch the squirrels has continued to impact my life ever since that cold Adirondack night. This quote reminds me to humble myself and approach every opportunity curiously and optimistically, working as hard as I can to thrive in the most difficult situations. It is my ambition to enter medical school with these attitudes to prepare myself for a lifetime of learning, serving, and thriving as a