Friday, July 15, 2005

"I'm pre - med, but I forgot why."

I have to write that pesky Medical School admissions essay. The prompt goes like this: Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school. The available space for your response os 5300 characters or approximately one full page... (AAMC, 2006)

Riiiiiiiiiight. Why I want to go to medical school... that should be easy.

I... want to go to medical school because.... um... because... I want to help people.... and.... I like science.... and I like figuring out stuff... and....um...

Ok, so it's harder than I thought. Suddenly it hit me: I WANT TO GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL BUT I FORGOT WHY! Seriously, I forgot why. I know I picked doctor because Mom said that "over my dead body are you going to become a nurse."
She's a nurse and she doesn't like it. At the time I only knew of one other profession: Being a doctor. If I couldn't be a nurse, I could be a doctor. They're always learning new stuff about how to treat people, so I thought that was cool. I came to that decicision in 10th grade.

I didn't have much of a true identity as I entered 10th grade. School was my identity because it was the only thing I was good at. But school couldn't get you very far - it couldn't make you popular or erase your quirks or past hurts. After I made the decision to be pre - med, being "pre - pre - med" became my identity. I made friends with Linh, Anh, Vina, and Ryan. I would have a future that could maybe cover up or somehow redeem my past. My new friends had dreams of going to college to be pre - med, so naturally, we found a big portion of our lives in common. Being pre - pre med was my life in high school and later in the first half of college. I focused on my classes and extracurricular activities. I didn't get the chance to volunteer much due to transportation constraints and the fact that I needed to work. When I did volunteer, it was with church and premedica with premedicaid. I don't have as much 'medical experiance' as some pre - meds which is somewhat of a source of an anxiety.

Anyway, I jumped from "pre - med sounds good" to "pre - med is my LIFE!!" really quickly. In college, I became Christian. So am I pre - med or am I Chrisitian? The Christian identity will stick with me LONG after any academic / professional identity.

But I do want to see why I decided to do pre - med. I know how God used me being pre - med. He used it to let me come into contact with TONS of people I otherwise would never have met and now we're friends - or they are people I have prayed about and tried to outreach to.

Still, why did I decide? Other than the fact being a nurse was out of the question? Well, I always liked medicine - I was imersed in medicine, being a patient numerious times when I was young and then learning about the medical field with Mom telling me about her days at work. I was good at science. Ok, so I could've become a researcher or something... well, I wanted to help people... no, really, help people. Like be there with them. Like, ask them what's going on. And then figure out what was wrong with them. Dentists do that... but mouths? eeeeew!

Well, that's my musings for starters... now to expand on that and put it in a 5300 character (roughtly 1 page) essay... sigh....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, good luck pre-med student!

Anonymous said...

This is a good thing to consider. Even if they didn't care for the med school app, I still need to know why I want to be a doctor. If it's not for God, it's not very worthwhile.

Anonymous said...

Katie this reminds me of my phase of not understanding why I go to school (hense the drop in GPA). You among others helped to remind me that my identity in Christ is never replaced by my professional identity. Your reasons for being a med student have been revised by Jesus, and I think we all can see that. Be a doctor for Christ, and really help people...