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Personal Statement Edits Needed, Please!


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Everyone always seems to have that “ah ha” moment, that one specific life altering experience that solidified their want to be a physician assistant, but for me, it’s different I’ve had half a lifetime of those moments.

 

It started freshman year of high school when my younger sister sliced her leg on a nail. It was a deep slice that had gone down to the muscle, blood was gushing everywhere and I was in awe; I just kept staring at it and poking around. At that point in my life I knew very little about the human body yet it was captivating. This was my first, relevant, interaction with the idea of working in the medical field. But it was only freshman year, there were years before a career would become a priority.

 

Before I knew it senior year and I was in a Health Careers dual enrollment program through my high school that allowed me to do rotations every other week at our local hospital with the purpose of helping me get a feel for different areas that the medical field had to offer. All though I saw so many amazing career opportunities it was my PA rotation that stood out the most to me. The way they built relationship with their patients, how confident they were in everything they did regardless of the area of the body they were focusing on, and the way they weren’t afraid to ask the physician for a consult. Everything they did seemed to come with such ease but also an immense amount of consideration and emotion.

 

After high school I became a CNA, jump-starting a career in the medical field with minimal education but still allowing my passions to shine. I continued my work as a Direct Care Worker all throughout my college career. 

 

With college came a lot of new experiences, one being a study abroad program to Belize that allowed me to experience health care from a foreign perspective. I remember the trip like it was yesterday but it was one specific day that stands out the most; it was 110 degrees, we were swamped with patients and I was working with four younger girls just doing simple routine vitals, when one of the girls became frantic. She didn’t understand what I was doing and didn’t want me to touch her or her friends. I began to listen to her concerns and handed her my stethoscope, holding the bell over my heart. The girl looked at me with concern at first but I could tell by the look on her face the moment she heard it. I explained to her how that was my heart and that if she would allow it I would like to hear hers. For the next hour that young girl stuck by my side and she was able to listen to the hearts of every patient I saw. To some, that day might have been no big deal but to me, it was everything. It set the foundation of wanting a career where I would be able to help people in more than one way. I wanted to diagnosis illness, but also express compassion and understanding, all the while building relationships and educating my patients.

 

I continued to expand my experience with medicine when I began an internship in cardiac rehab. The first half of it was spent building relationships with the patients while they worked out. I saw the same faces, every other day for 8 weeks and in that short amount of time I gained such insight. Not only was I learning about cardiac diseases, I was writing exercise prescriptions and educating my patients on the benefits of exercise, all while building those strong relationships that allowed them to open up to me and be more receptive to the things I was saying. Leaving that rotation was incredibly hard on both my patients and myself but my next rotation brought with it something I had yet to experience, surgery. Up to this point in my medical experience I had yet to see real surgery, I had worked on cadavers but that was nothing compared to this. From aortic valve repairs to coronary artery bypass grafts, pacemakers and stents, each one was more exhilarating than the next.

 

With so many great experiences that were different in a countless number of ways how could I choose just one area to specialize in? Then it hit me, these differences weren’t a bad thing, they were another thing. I know I have a love for medicine, that’s a fact, but choosing what specific area of medicine I love the most, that’s a lot harder to narrow down. By being a PA I would have the option of experiencing the diversity the world has to offer while offering myself back, being able to expand my knowledge and understanding of the body while always remembering that that “body” is a human who deserve compassion.

 

I put my all into everything I do and everything I have done has led me to this. This moment when I solidify all of my hard work and dedication for becoming a PA; working to gain patient care experience while also attending school full time, traveling abroad to experience medicine in a different light, retaking classes to better my understanding, spending my summers taking classes or applying myself in internships. All of it has helped prepare me for this precise moment.

 

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