Why I Would Like to Attend Medical School
In the entire span of my admittedly brief life, I have only seriously considered pursuing three different professions. In all three vocations, whether that of a psychiatrist, a bioethical litigator, or a physician-missionary, healing would necessarily take a central role. As such I have always expected to attend medical school prior to undertaking any life-long career, making my motives a rather integral part of my raison d’etre. Nonetheless, I will try to whittle this lifelong dream into its three most salient components: my desire to help people, my desire to better understand psychopathology, and my lack of alternative employment avenues given my horrible handwriting. Actually the last one is a joke, and I’m going to replace it with my most important reason, that of attempting to add whatever positive influence I can to a medical system seemingly rife with negativity.
I have been brought up to believe that the haves should always help the have-nots, whether what is had is money or merriment. This belief was imbued in me variously by my mother, a physician herself, my father, a vibrant humanist, and my grandmother, a music school teacher. My first formal education at a Friends’ school and that in all the subsequent years of my life has only confirmed these lessons. Since my gifts are largely mental and emotional, they are the logical strengths to exercise for the good of society. Not everyone can realistically attend medical school, and fewer still are willing and able to navigate the vagaries and difficulties of serving the mentally ill population of today’s world. I personally feel a duty to try and improve the lives of these people, especially those who are incarcerated or otherwise disenfranchised.
From a scholarly standpoint, I’ve always been interested in the mind and its interactions with both the rest of the body and with the world at large. Specifically, I am curious as to how physical idiosyncrasies, cultural variations, and outright pathologies affect such interplay. As such, psychiatric medicine is a career uniquely suited to my interests given its focus on this same area and its expanded breadth covering the rest of human physiology. No course of study other than medical school will more completely and specifically cater to my particular academic predilections.
Finally, it is my impression and experience that healthcare has increasingly become an ‘industry,’ more concerned with materials and their cost than mankind and his care. As a determined a-materialist with a strong empathic identification with the travails of the ill, I believe that I can bring quality healthcare to populations that are as deserving and dedicated as any others, but for whatever reason are shortchanged. If I can make a meaningful difference in the lives of those who otherwise would have to suffer, I can happily discharge my calling with assiduousness in lieu of affluence.
As aforementioned, my dedication to the plight of the mentally ill is fueled by an excellent upbringing that stressed helping the least fortunate as the most noble of pursuits. Additionally however, even the most philanthropic of innate motivations is shepherded by the crook of life experience. In my life, that crook was wrought from my own struggles with mental disorder. Since 7th grade I have suffered from refractory major depression, and in 2001 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and have been treated with reasonable success ever since. As with any experiment, mine has had periods of varying difficulty and disability. A life of mania and mood-swings is hardly conducive to doing much of anything besides getting into trouble. It would be impossibly convenient to blame the totality of any sub-par semesters, slips before finish-lines, and substandard decisions that make my file less attractive than it otherwise could be. Conversely, I am reasonably convinced that some of my more memorable failures can be reasonably attributed to my illness. Regardless of how my illness factored into my education, it will undoubtedly factor into the rest of my life as a powerful impetus.
I hope to meld my medical training with a study of the law. Eventually, I plan to employ expertise on the subjects of civil rights and public advocacy to better serve mental health patients both struggling in the world and workplace as well as those incarcerated in prison. I believe in the God-given right of all people to lead a life free of sickness and sadness. A caring and competent physician can usually alleviate the illnesses of the mind that afflict so many. However in order to give the ill a life with both opportunities and happiness, but also free of discrimination and oppression the rules that govern our society must be navigated and possibly even changed.
