This is the personal statement I have included in my medical school applications. Personal statements are the opportunity applicants have to express the reason of why they want to be a doctor. They are short, to the point, and personal. I share mine to show you why I am choosing this and to hopefully help you understand my philosophy behind the struggle between a loving, all-knowing God and the suffering that occurs while we are separated from Him here on earth.
Melissa Snell
Personal Statement
Most
people view suffering as a negative thing. But when Buddha said, “Life is
suffering,” I don’t think he meant it that way. I used to think I wanted to be
a doctor to relieve the suffering of mankind. I know differently now. Through
my own experiences on my path towards medicine I have learned that there is
significant beauty in the suffering of man. I believe that suffering begins a
transformation for each of us and the ability of man to turn their life from
shadow into something spectacular strikes something in me. It is my desire to
continue to watch man transform through the lens of medicine.
From a
young age I have been fascinated with the question of why. I wanted to be a
doctor growing up but suffered with a lack of self-confidence. Because of this
feeling, when I entered college I fully intended to create between myself and
science the biggest chasm ever seen. I did study in the social sciences where I
was exposed to the mystery of the human brain. I loved Psychology and how
people had taken human beings and studied them in order to answer my favorite
question: why? Why do people do what
they do? Why do we press on despite overwhelming odds? I began to be interested
in not simply the psychological answers but the biological answers in a
Behavioral Neurobiology course where we studied these questions and I was able
to first hold a human brain in my gloved palms. It was from this springboard
that my fascination with the human body blossomed and love of the human brain
deepened.
Through
experiences serving others while living in Virginia, I realized how deeply I
wanted to serve others for the remainder of my life. I became willing to do
whatever was needed because I wanted
to do medicine and knew that I could put in whatever work was necessary, whatever I felt my
intellectual shortcomings might be. After all, being a doctor was who I had
wanted to be since I was a child but had allowed my personal doubts to
constrain my options. My desire was deepened as I returned to school and
participated in activities that helped me gain some understanding of what life
as a doctor would entail, and the grueling road to get there. My interest propelled
me into research on my campus where we studied the effects of sex hormones on Parkinson’s
disease. And then onto a research internship in the Department of Pediatric
Regenerative Medicine in association with the University of California, Davis.
This internship proved
invaluable to me in an unforeseen way. While there I learned intense lessons,
not only about science but about life in general and about enjoying life amid suffering.
This newly acquired understanding was tested my last semester of prerequisites
for medical school when in the week of midterms my older brother took his life.
While dealing with this devastating news, I still had half a semester to finish
as well as obligations for my church that put me over the spiritual and
physical welfare of thirty other young women. I pressed on and I learned how
deep my desire for medicine truly ran as it would have been insanely easy to
stop and be still.
During that time, many things
helped me remember why I wanted this, including shadowing. I will never forget
the image of a doctor kneeling before a scared, sick young girl. Nor will I
forget seeing the speckled hand of a wise physician placed on the shoulder of a
youth who had tried to commit suicide and subsequently was suffering from
neurological setbacks. As I learned from these great men and women, the role of
a doctor is to teach patients and their loved ones about the functions of their
bodies and how to treat them in such a way as to provide longevity. The role I
know I will someday fill is to have compassion for patients and to guide people
in their options and decisions, while under a physician’s care and after. The
role of a doctor is to help people understand the role of suffering as an
essential part of life, of transformation.
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