principleintopractice

It’s currently the time of year when the Student Affairs personnel at my school people are rallying the troops (third year medical students) to start thinking about what we want to be when we “grow up”. It’s early days yet, but the words “personal statement” seem to inject fear into my classmates. I guess most of them don’t write a blog for a hobby…

I haven’t started to write a statement yet, and I’m sure it’ll be an angst filled experience when I finally get down to it, but mulling it over got me thinking back to the personal statement I submitted when I first applied to medical school.

I was not a traditional med-school applicant. I was not “pre-med” (a major I would discourage anyone from pursuing) and I had never shadowed a doctor nor shown any interest in a medical profession.  I had a broad interest in all things scientific. I took the MCATs on a dare and did well enough to consider applying to medical school.  My love of science made the MD/PhD route intriguing to me, so I decided that in addition to the PhD programs I was interested in I would also apply to a few MD/PhD programs.

A couple weekends ago I was up in Boston and enjoyed a dinner with Kamal Patel of Pain Database and others. It was an enjoyable evening, and while discussing the merits and perils of being a med student I somewhat jokingly suggested to Kamal that I should dig up my old personal statement and post it on my blog.  He thought it seemed like a great idea (surprisingly, alcohol was not involved in this discussion), so now that I’ve had a bit of downtime I’ve dug it up and given it a look over.

In hindsight, I seem a little overenthusiastic (so many exclamation points!!!!), but generally I think that my enthusiasm for life is genuine.  One of the closing lines is something that I still deeply believe. In fact, it is a sentiment that comes through in the name of this blog.

“I believe that the practical application of knowledge is the most rewarding result of study and curiosity.”

 

 

Even 8 (eek!) years ago, I wanted to put principles into practice.

Without further ado…

(Unedited, except to abbreviate the names of the professors I worked with)

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Until a few years ago I could still see the remnants of my first “experiment” in my garden every spring: red tulips growing along the fence line of the vegetable patch. As long as I can remember, I’ve been asking questions and trying to figure things out. The directions on a pack of tulip bulbs told me to plant them six inches deep, six inches apart. But at five I had to ask… why? Luckily I’ve been blessed with equally inquisitive parents, so my father indulged me, and the next day we were digging holes ranging in depth from one inch to two feet. The next spring I waited expectantly. Somewhat to my disappointment, they all came up! That wasn’t supposed to happen! Only the next year did it become clear that six inches seemed about optimal for a perennial show.

My quest for understanding and knowledge through experience has been a lot of fun, taken me many places, and introduced me to many people. As a child I would spend days in the woods and fields around my house exploring and trying to understand nature. When I wasn’t out adventuring, I was home reading books; I was amazed at what there was to learn! When I first started riding horses it was hard to find me away from barns, vet offices, or anywhere else I could learn about horses. While this led me to compete at national quiz competitions, I have most enjoyed becoming a thoroughly knowledgeable horse person. I apply what I know to working with my own horses and those of others, and enjoy teaching and helping local kids and even adults with general equine knowledge and veterinary care.

I particularly enjoy teaching others about polocrosse, an exciting combination of polo and lacrosse. I started playing on my first pony, a well-trained, athletic pony that did everything I asked her to do. When it was time for me to get a bigger horse, I looked at a number of horses that were ready to play, but eventually decided to buy a young ex-racehorse with a lot of potential and very little training. At times it was hard to watch my peers get better so quickly on their well-trained horses, and at times I thought I should give in and get a horse that was ready to play, but the challenge excited me, and I stuck with it. After four years of hard work, a lot of sweat, a few falls, and occasional bouts of anguish, I’m proud to play on a horse that I brought to the game on my own, and I know that I am a better rider because of the experience.

Now in college, I still can’t learn and do enough. I have joined a number of groups on campus, and am on the executive boards of the campus-wide Programs and Activities Council, the Biochemistry Club, and Alpha Zeta, a co-ed honors/service/social fraternity. Going to a large state school, I have had the opportunity to take a wide range of classes that apply to my major, my interests, and things that just seem neat! During the fall of my freshman year I became SCUBA certified so that I could travel to Little Cayman during the winter break to study coral reefs with a marine geologist. I was so enthusiastic that she invited me to apply for a summer internship studying the reefs around the island. I applied, got the position, and spent two weeks documenting species diversity, morbidity and mortality of coral around the island.

A fascination with Moorish architecture and Picasso’s Guernica, and a desire to test my Spanish on its home ground, led me to drag my mother to Spain. My basic grasp of the language and her ability to rent a car made for an incredible trip. For ten days we traveled in the south of Spain, seeing architecture and experiencing the culture. Similarly, a fascination with Guinness Stout, Ireland, and the Irish led me to take a youth-hostelling trip to Dublin. These and other trips have heightened my curiosity and driven my desire to see and experience more of the world.

During college, the curiosity that my parents initially encouraged when I was a child developed into a desire to do scientific research. In addition to the coral reef project, I am glad to have had several other exciting research experiences. I was fortunate to receive a Center for Bioinorganic Chemistry summer grant to work in the laboratory of Dr. GZ on the biodegradation of aromatic hydrocarbons by Pseudomonads. Another year I got funding to study the incidence of Lyme disease in mice and their parasites along a rural to urban transact in New Jersey in the laboratory of Dr. MS. I am now conducting my senior thesis work in the toxicology lab of Dr. LW, studying the effects of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p–dioxin, an environmental contaminant, on developing fish embryos. The curiosity that once inspired me to plant rows of tulips has brought me to believe that medical science is the most exciting and dynamic field I could hope to enter, yet I am hesitant to devote my life purely to lab work and research. I believe that the practical application of knowledge is the most rewarding result of study and curiosity. I want to enter the medical field to combine my drive to discover and understand with my love of people, and become a doctor working at the frontiers of clinical science.