Narrative Essay Example: Medicine As A Career

📌Category: Business, Career, Experience, Health, Life, Medicine, Myself
📌Words: 915
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 22 January 2022

Growing up with at least nine aunts and uncles on both sides of my family, it seemed inevitable that someone would be in the health field. My maternal grandpa was a dentist in rural southern China, and when the family migrated to the United States, many of his children became dentists themselves, doctors, or acupuncturists. When my mother arrived in California, she began the process of getting a license to practice oriental medicine in the U.S. As a result, I grew up in a household full of anatomy books and plastic human models with carefully marked meridians. I had a passing interest in the Chinese textbooks with images of dissections, but I hadn’t yet considered medicine as a career.

From an early age, I would guzzle down bitter concoctions of herbs, wincing as my mom once again reassured, “Today’s medicine should be better. I changed it since your pulse was weaker than yesterday.” Although I never enjoyed drinking these brews, something that always fascinated me about Chinese medicine was its ability to tailor treatments to the patient. Day by day and hour by hour, my mom, an Oriental doctor, knew exactly which herbs complemented each other and changed them to match the patient’s symptoms. She would also stress prevention and a healthy lifestyle, so whether I had a cold or not, I drank my daily serving of boiled flowers, leaves, and roots. I was not aware of it at the time, but my mom’s herbs and teachings were one of many factors that influenced my decision to pursue medicine. 

Fascinated by magic tricks, I always wondered how magicians knew how to make objects disappear or rebuild sliced props. When my 3rd-grade teacher introduced us to “Mad Science,” an after-school program that explained different physical phenomena with a lesson specifically about magic tricks, I asked my mom to sign me up. Throughout elementary school, I began to see parallels between magic tricks and science. The same awe and curiosity that I felt when a magician unveiled a flock of birds also applied to learning about the natural world. At the time, I also had an interest in Legos and origami, so when adults asked what I wanted to be, I would say, “An architect!” It seemed fitting – a career that combined handiwork, science, design, and the best magic trick of all, turning nothing into something. In fifth grade, we were introduced to biology. Instead of gluing together wood planks, we dissected frogs. Although the smell of formaldehyde was something to get used to, I enjoyed carefully pinning back the delicate tissues, identifying all the different parts of the frog’s digestive system, and asking the teacher which organs looked the same in our bodies. Learning about the millions of processes that construct and fuel our bodies was much more interesting than building bridges. 

In high school, I began research in a UCI neurobiology lab. I learned how to prepare mice brain samples and conduct behavioral experiments to assess how stress affected certain pathways in the brain. Research was cathartic; when I arrived in the lab after school, I would check in with my graduate mentor to see what needed to be done and begin working. The intrigue of understanding the final brain scan outweighed the repetitive nature of the tasks. My last summer in the lab, I was asked to present preliminary data on a project I was working on. This was my first time presenting scientific data, and I was unsure that I could explain it with enough rigor and clarity. At the end of my presentation, the professor critiqued the syntax of my conclusion. Although there was a lot to improve on, I had proven to myself that I could communicate science and enjoyed sharing this knowledge with others.

By the time I was in college, I had shadowed healthcare workers at Cedars Sinai and Dr. Shirley Wang’s clinic but was still undecided on whether I wanted to pursue research or medicine. Since I loved learning about the human body, I decided to switch my major from Biology to Physiological Sciences and find research through the Biomedical Research Minor. I also joined clubs and organizations that centered around health/science education to improve my communication skills and gain exposure to the medical field. One experience, shadowing with hepatologist Dr. Steven-Huy Han, left a profound impression on me about what a physician could be. Patient, nurturing, and thorough, Dr. Han was honest and unpresumptuous. He easily gained the trust of patients and his staff with his compassion and competence. From witnessing his methodical breakdowns of cases that arrived at a final diagnosis to his careful explanations of treatment plans for his patients, I aspired to also be a physician that validated and addressed patients’ concerns, used scientific expertise to promote health, and valued preventative care. To me, medicine combined science, teaching, and the spirit of patient-centered prevention that I valued from a young age, ultimately working with others to improve their quality of life. 

During my time in high school and college, a lot of my family members got sick. Many of my relatives are past middle age, and even among the younger kids, some suffer from mental illnesses, cancer, or heart disease. Last year, I lost my two remaining grandparents, one of natural causes and one to COVID-19. As I worried about the time that I have left with my parents, I sensed a greater urgency to be a doctor, someone that could protect patients and loved ones from preventable diseases. Although my family has first-hand experience that healthcare is not always accessible or all-knowing, these gaps in knowledge motivate me to continue pursuing medicine. Since I first felt that childish joy learning about the human body, presented science for the first time, had those intimate moments with patients, and volunteered with community organizations to promote health, I still believe that medicine can be a source of hope (and perhaps magic) to those around me.

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