Essay Category:
Essay Question:
In the space provided, describe your motivation for a career in medicine and experiences you have had that helped confirm this desire.
As a child, I often took the benefits of good healthcare for granted. My doctors were seemed warm and receptive. It was not until later in my life that I realized how a physician can truly change the lives of patients and patients' families. Two events in my life brought this to my attention. While I was in high school, a close family member experienced clinical depression. Over a short time period, this individual changed from a sympathetic, lively person to an irritable one who would not get out of bed some days. This change was very frightening to my whole family, and I recall a deep sense of relief when a family physician recognized that these behavioral changes were symptoms of a clinical illness. With medication, my family members affect changed almost instantaneously. Psychological counseling also aided in her recovery, though not as dramatically as the medication. I was amazed at how medicine healed something as complicated emotional states. This fostered my interest in psychiatry, leading to my exploration of medicine. Briefly after changing majors in college, a second event presented a very different perspective. At eighty years old, my grandmother died of cancer. Complaining of abdominal pains, she visited her general practitioner in Florida, who quickly dismissed her concerns. A month later, still in pain, my grandmother drove to the hospital, where the doctors diagnosed her with cancer. My family brought her to Nashville for surgery, where she received good care. It was too late, though. The cancer had already advanced considerably. My parents decided against chemotherapy, allowing my grandmother to die peacefully. I do not know how things would have changed had the practitioner recognized the cancer. Due to his inattentiveness, I will never know. This taught me about the responsibilities of a physician and made me rethink some poor academic decisions. Since these two events, my work at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center has taught me a lot about the practical aspects of a career in medicine. Volunteering weekly at Children's, I have had ample opportunities to visit and talk with patients of various ages, which has put a personal face on my career choice, while acclimating me to the hospital environment. My work in the Clinical Genetics lab at CCHMC also has exposed me to some important facets of medicine. These experiences at CCHMC have helped me to confirm my career choice. With medicine offering the opportunity for me to serve my community while working with a variety of people in a scientifically based environment, I can think of no better career to which I would dedicate my life.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
In the space provided, please describe your interest in attending The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health and the unique qualities that you would bring to the entering class.
My goal in selecting a medical school is to find the University that will enable me to be the best physician I can be. This is why I am interested in the College of Medicine and Public Health. By speaking with the parents of one graduate of the College of Medicine and Public Health, I became aware of the caliber of physicians which graduate from OSU. Additionally, I appreciate the opportunity provided by OSU to approach the curriculum from a path of the student's choosing. I feel that such a choice would be very beneficial to my education. As a medical student at OSU, what I would bring to the college is an unusually thorough understanding of group interaction and dynamics and a variety of experiences with adults and children of different backgrounds and races, through my experiences both in and out of hospitals. Through my undergraduate psychology studies, I attended several courses on group dynamics and served as a teaching assistant for two of these. Through these courses I have witnessed and participated in various forms of group interaction. Such experiences should prove quite useful in my academics and during my professional career in medicine. My second unique quality, my experiences with diverse groups of both adults and, especially, children, stems from my two years as a music education major at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati and from my experiences in volunteering at Children's Hospital Medical Center, also in Cincinnati. I have especially enjoyed my work with children in these environments. Children are an especially enthusiastic and resilient group. My experiences at CCM involved working with mostly underprivileged minority students in downtown Cincinnati. Though this experience was quite a culture shock, I have found it very rewarding, and they have shaped my interest in possibly pursuing some kind of pediatric specialty.
