Admissions Essay - Medical School and Shopping :: Medicine College Admissions Essays

Admissions Essay -  Medical School and Shopping    My mom and I are the type of women who refuse to spend too much money for quality clothing. We are admittedly shopaholics. Our escapades can last for days and my mother always outlasts me! Well, always does not last forever. One day, my mother and I were on one of our short safaris. She had been complaining of headaches but, ever the trooper, she insisted we go (1-Day Sale, of course!). When we reached our destination my mother was dizzy and her head was pounding. Worried, I ushered her into a local drug store, where we found one of those standing blood pressure machines. My mother gave me a weak smile as I turned to sit down and wait for the results. That's when I heard the crash. My mother and the machine were keeling over in a horrid cascade of mom, machine and medicine. I rushed to her aid and desperately tried to keep her from completely falling onto the ground. My mother passed out due to extremely high blood pressure and I could do nothing about it. Throughout my academic care er, I had been sure of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life-be a doctor. I was not emotionally committed to this endeavor until that eight grade year when my mother and I were helpless.    Ever since that day, I have been on a mission. Determined to learn more, I actively researched my family's medical history. Finding that both sides record hypertension and cardiovascular disease as problems, I decided to delve deeper. This time I found that African Americans as a group historically suffer from those same complications. The more I learned, the more I fell in love with the intricacies of the circular system. Things such as, the components of the blood and their different duties, the specialized characteristics of cardiac muscles and the blood's bicarbonate buffer system all fascinated me as I traveled through course work. Book knowledge turned to field knowledge as I decided to pursue other avenues of understanding. I worked with the Red Cross Blood Drive in high school; carrying blood, helping the nurses and learning more. I interviewed three doctors; a cardiologist, an internist and an obstetrician-gynecologist to find out more about the profession and what it takes to be an M.D. Although the internist tried to dissuade me from pursuing he practice, I gleaned the good and the bad from all three doctors and judged for myself the validity of what I wanted to do.