Personal Statement (First Draft)
Personal Statement (First Draft)
In an assignment which I turned in a month ago, my class had to turn in our Letters of Intent (a.k.a. Personal Statement). Some in the class intend to go on to graduate school, others into medical school, while others are content with their up-coming Bachelor's Degrees and are planning on job hunting. No matter where we all intend to go, our Letters of Intent were due and they had to be 3 pages long.
I got a 9.7 out of 10 on the assignment.
The paper was marked off for Mechanics & sentence style. There are notes marked all over my paper, which I'll fix, but the following is the entire paper in its first draft form.
The day I decided to pursue a career in the medical field was a very specific moment on a very specific day in my life. A few weeks before, a co-worker of mine asked me to take a class with him. At the beginning of the first class period I was taken by surprise by the teaching style, intrigued by the subject matter, and was intent on seeing it through. By the end of the second class, my mind was made up and new life goals began springing up in all the right ways. I had seized on something life-altering and I knew it. A career in patient health care was a career for me. This class that I speak of turned out to be an EMT Certification class and it was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken in my life. I was 20 years old at the time, I was working full-time at IKEA as a cashier, I was out of school, and was looking for some direction in my life. Through a series of events beginning with my experiences as an EMT in training, I look back nearly 6 years later, and it seems like everything has been leading to this point; a student in pursuit of a career as a medical cialis specializing in emergency medicine.
I was not one of those students who wanted to be a doctor as long as they could remember. I came out of high school intending to follow a career in computer programming. I lasted three semesters at DeVry Institute of Technology before the signs and symptoms all told me to run away as fast as possible. A career as a computer programmer was not for me and in a way it was directly responsible for my situation now. I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe that you appreciate what you have more when you know what it feels like when it’s gone. This was a valuable lesson for me and a lesson I believe you can only learn from failure. And I take that lesson with me as I go on to this day.
Having completed the EMT course, I was ready to commit to a career and go back into school full-time at my local community college intent on pursing a degree in nursing. Patient health was on the brain and a renewed interest in academia had been sparked. But this wasn’t the end. Upon full-filling my nursing pre-requisites, I meet Dr. Barnes, professor of human anatomy and human physiology at Contra Costa College. The human body, biology, and science in general had all become fascinating to me. This was the crime and Dr. Barnes was the culprit. This was also the time where my mind began to wander beyond the boundaries of the nursing field.
I began working part-time in the Hyperbaric Unit of John Muir Medical Center as a transporter. This my first job in the health care field and it was a job that I held for 2 years. Now this wasn’t the first time with my first patient. On a twelve hour ambulance ride-along, myself and two EMTs responded to 6 calls. But those calls were in regards to an emergency situation for the most part. This was on entire different side of the spectrum. When you’re talking about hyperbaric medicine you’re mainly talking about recovery medicine. And while hyperbaric medicine isn’t necessarily my goal for specialization, it did give me a number of great opportunities. First and foremost is what you gain from a familiarization with the hospital setting just by working in a hospital on a regular basis. The skills and confidence you gain by working with patients and becoming familiar with medical instruments, medical employees, and medical jargon. One of the high points for me was the chance to be able to talk to the doctors and ask questions. And the experience of this all lead to my eventual pursuit in a career in medicine as I switched my major, applied, and got accepted into Dominican University of California. I am now near completion of a Bachelor’s Degree in pre-med biology.
I eventually began shadowing a doctor in the Emergency Room of St. Francis Memorial Hospital. This is something I’ve always wanted to do. Through the past 5+ years in developing my interest in the emergency medical field, I believe that you can only learn so much from books and from 2nd hand experience. Eventually you have to get in there and experience it for yourself. This is why I feel like every minute I’m in the emergency room is invaluable to me. Every minute is confirmation about my suspicions of my interests. And in a way it’s a book end to one section of a journey that started not “as long as I can remember” but as soon as I appreciated what interested me. This is something I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to pursue without Dominican University. This is something I wouldn’t have felt reading to begin without those preparatory clinical years working in John Muir. This is something I wouldn’t have appreciated as a science and not only medicine without my flirtation with nursing and without the help of Dr. Barnes. This is something that I might have never taken seriously without my experience as an EMT in training. And this is definitely something that I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate as a field of interest without my experience with DeVry. Looking forward way back when, it seemed like a jumbled mess of twists and turns. Looking backward it really was just a straight line after all. I’m ready to start looking forward once again.
I approached the essay with two goals in mind:
(I also thought the paper was a little corny at the end.)
Now my problem is cutting the paper down in length.
Most schools look for 500 word essays. This paper is 951. One school I'm interested in is only asking for 300 words.
In an assignment which I turned in a month ago, my class had to turn in our Letters of Intent (a.k.a. Personal Statement). Some in the class intend to go on to graduate school, others into medical school, while others are content with their up-coming Bachelor's Degrees and are planning on job hunting. No matter where we all intend to go, our Letters of Intent were due and they had to be 3 pages long.
I got a 9.7 out of 10 on the assignment.
The paper was marked off for Mechanics & sentence style. There are notes marked all over my paper, which I'll fix, but the following is the entire paper in its first draft form.
The day I decided to pursue a career in the medical field was a very specific moment on a very specific day in my life. A few weeks before, a co-worker of mine asked me to take a class with him. At the beginning of the first class period I was taken by surprise by the teaching style, intrigued by the subject matter, and was intent on seeing it through. By the end of the second class, my mind was made up and new life goals began springing up in all the right ways. I had seized on something life-altering and I knew it. A career in patient health care was a career for me. This class that I speak of turned out to be an EMT Certification class and it was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken in my life. I was 20 years old at the time, I was working full-time at IKEA as a cashier, I was out of school, and was looking for some direction in my life. Through a series of events beginning with my experiences as an EMT in training, I look back nearly 6 years later, and it seems like everything has been leading to this point; a student in pursuit of a career as a medical cialis specializing in emergency medicine.
I was not one of those students who wanted to be a doctor as long as they could remember. I came out of high school intending to follow a career in computer programming. I lasted three semesters at DeVry Institute of Technology before the signs and symptoms all told me to run away as fast as possible. A career as a computer programmer was not for me and in a way it was directly responsible for my situation now. I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe that you appreciate what you have more when you know what it feels like when it’s gone. This was a valuable lesson for me and a lesson I believe you can only learn from failure. And I take that lesson with me as I go on to this day.
Having completed the EMT course, I was ready to commit to a career and go back into school full-time at my local community college intent on pursing a degree in nursing. Patient health was on the brain and a renewed interest in academia had been sparked. But this wasn’t the end. Upon full-filling my nursing pre-requisites, I meet Dr. Barnes, professor of human anatomy and human physiology at Contra Costa College. The human body, biology, and science in general had all become fascinating to me. This was the crime and Dr. Barnes was the culprit. This was also the time where my mind began to wander beyond the boundaries of the nursing field.
I began working part-time in the Hyperbaric Unit of John Muir Medical Center as a transporter. This my first job in the health care field and it was a job that I held for 2 years. Now this wasn’t the first time with my first patient. On a twelve hour ambulance ride-along, myself and two EMTs responded to 6 calls. But those calls were in regards to an emergency situation for the most part. This was on entire different side of the spectrum. When you’re talking about hyperbaric medicine you’re mainly talking about recovery medicine. And while hyperbaric medicine isn’t necessarily my goal for specialization, it did give me a number of great opportunities. First and foremost is what you gain from a familiarization with the hospital setting just by working in a hospital on a regular basis. The skills and confidence you gain by working with patients and becoming familiar with medical instruments, medical employees, and medical jargon. One of the high points for me was the chance to be able to talk to the doctors and ask questions. And the experience of this all lead to my eventual pursuit in a career in medicine as I switched my major, applied, and got accepted into Dominican University of California. I am now near completion of a Bachelor’s Degree in pre-med biology.
I eventually began shadowing a doctor in the Emergency Room of St. Francis Memorial Hospital. This is something I’ve always wanted to do. Through the past 5+ years in developing my interest in the emergency medical field, I believe that you can only learn so much from books and from 2nd hand experience. Eventually you have to get in there and experience it for yourself. This is why I feel like every minute I’m in the emergency room is invaluable to me. Every minute is confirmation about my suspicions of my interests. And in a way it’s a book end to one section of a journey that started not “as long as I can remember” but as soon as I appreciated what interested me. This is something I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to pursue without Dominican University. This is something I wouldn’t have felt reading to begin without those preparatory clinical years working in John Muir. This is something I wouldn’t have appreciated as a science and not only medicine without my flirtation with nursing and without the help of Dr. Barnes. This is something that I might have never taken seriously without my experience as an EMT in training. And this is definitely something that I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate as a field of interest without my experience with DeVry. Looking forward way back when, it seemed like a jumbled mess of twists and turns. Looking backward it really was just a straight line after all. I’m ready to start looking forward once again.
I approached the essay with two goals in mind:
- The essay must answer the question "Why do you want to be a doctor?"
- The reader of the essay must get the feeling that I'm ready for medical school. I would do this with statements backed up by experiences.
(I also thought the paper was a little corny at the end.)
Now my problem is cutting the paper down in length.
Most schools look for 500 word essays. This paper is 951. One school I'm interested in is only asking for 300 words.