Medicine and My Purpose in Life as a Student

A quote that speaks to me currently is that “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. “ – George Bernard Shaw. Ever since I was very young, I can remember getting a feeling of love and integrity simply by getting to help and feel for others. Growing up I did not know anything much about myself, but something I did know was that I had a love for serving others because it has always been taught in my family. Fast-forwarding to my junior year in high school, that’s when it began to hit me. I was becoming more into a young adult and soon had to decide on major future decisions. This is my purpose in life as a student essay where I will discuss this topic. 

As I had mentioned before, I knew that I wanted a career related to helping other people and serving. After taking a few science courses throughout high school, I took time and patience to realize what I wanted to do, but soon enough I found myself interested and fascinated by the human body and what it could do from inside. My thoughts and courses generated a huge interest in me and the medical field. Telling my parents that I wanted to become a doctor was not as easy as planned, they thought that it would be too complicated and rigorous for me and it made me feel less without my family’s support. In other words, they underestimated me. However, that did not stop my pursuit of wanting to be a pre-med student in the future. Every day I would take time to not only speak to my science teachers but also to investigate any type of internships or programs I could join and do just to prove my parents wrong. After months of looking and applying to programs and internships, I decided to apply to a medical internship meant for high school students hosted in the one and only brilliant Harvard Medical School in Boston Massachusetts. Three months later, driving back from a hectic day in school I received something at my door. As soon as I began reading the envelope at my door, my fingers began sweating and my heart began to pound intensely. I began yelling out to my parents “Mom! Dad! I got into the Harvard internship!”. They both immediately rushed right by my side as fast as they could and began crying tears of joy. We were both in a state of shock because we did not know if the day would ever come. It was like a dream came true, but that was only the first step of my journey to becoming a medical student. Preparing for my trip to Harvard I started to read more books about biology and anatomy. Reading more about biology made me learn new things about my body that I never knew before. It was like a dream came true, but that was only the first step of my journey to becoming a medical doctor. Preparing for my trip to Harvard, I began to read more books about biology and anatomy. Reading more about biology made me learn new things about my body that I never knew before.

I was happy that I knew what I wanted to do in the future, but I was looking forward to going to Harvard and learning more about how medicine and healthcare structure works. I learned about so many new diseases and illnesses, and I became fascinated with research. I never knew that there were so many kinds of cancers and rare diseases that we did not know how to cure. At Harvard, I got a hands-on experience on how to suture. I enjoyed doing this because I practiced suturing on a fake pig which is very closely related to our human skin because of the rough skin tissue. I did not only learn how to do this all alone, but I was taught by a plastic surgeon which I looked up too. I loved doing this work hands-on and it was one of the experiences that I will never forget after I went there. It will always remain a big dream of mine to go there again not only to study but to practice medicine.

Boston is one of the best locations in the world for the development of medicine and research. Located in the heart of Boston’s Medical Center there is the Boston Children’s hospital which strives to improve the lives of as many children as they can. Living in Boston and walking around in the streets and seeing children that just got surgery on their legs brought tears to my eyes. I wish I could do everything I can to help them because life isn’t about me it’s about others who need help more than I do. I feel like every single person that was put on earth has a purpose. In my mind, my purpose is to do the best that I can to help other people that are sick or ill and need a doctor’s help. I know that we don’t always end up where we want to be, but as long as I know that I tried my hardest to save other people’s lives then I will feel like I accomplished my purpose in life.

I’ve seen so many doctors, and they take their time every single day of their lives to try their hardest to help others. In one particular instance, I was talking to a trauma surgeon. He told me that when he was employed in Afghanistan he frequently had soldiers brought to him that had been on the verge of death usually after they got shot by an enemy sniper. It was only a matter of minutes before all the blood leaking from their wounds would spill out. I asked him, “What was the chance of them surviving this emergency surgery?” And he said that they only had a 1% chance of survival but regardless of that fact he had tried his best to save them. He used all his experiences and knowledge from medical school, and he ended up saving both people who got brought in minutes after a life-threatening injury had occurred in battle. I was shocked because this story showed me that nothing is impossible. I went home and thought about what this trauma surgeon told me. I understood that he knew that the odds were against him when he was a trauma surgeon, but he ignored that fact. He went to work every day, not caring about himself but using his whole heart and caring about other patients, and that is what lead to his success.

So many topics of medicine begin to fascinate me and it is almost impossible for me to stop talking about them. My favorite thing is to learn by observing surgery done in front of me AKA shadowing other surgeons, but I know that none of this would have been possible without many, numerous experiments and research that was done before we test it on living humans. That’s a reason why I value research as equally important as being a doctor because without research a great majority of this would not have been possible. For instance, if we stop research for a year then so many people are going to end up dying because we couldn’t figure out a way to treat newly evolved viruses and diseases. For example, the flu is constantly evolving to survive because every single time we develop a new vaccine to kill the flu cells other flu cells may still be immune to it, so we would need to develop a new vaccine next year.

That brings me back to my point which is without research we would most likely be dying early or experiencing more outbreaks with diseases and viruses throughout the country. And this happens all around the world every day, but we are lucky enough to be living in America which has one of the best health care systems around the world and that is the reason we can live to an average age of 85. In some countries in Africa and Asia which do not have developed health care systems, people are dying daily because of the lack of medical professionals and resources. Another dream of mine would be to go to those countries in Africa and Asia once a year and help these people defeat the illnesses and diseases that they are fighting against.

Those are a couple of examples of the experiences that I had while spending part of my summer at Harvard Med. To become a medical specialist is my current purpose in life as a student. In addition to gaining a ton of knowledge and learning, my true purpose in life, I also met so many new friends that I hope to spend more time within the future. I realized that the medical field has endless opportunities, ones that we have yet to discover. I am happy to be continuing my medical journey at such an amazing college, California Baptist University and being a step closer to becoming a doctor and saving many lives in the future.