Failed Starts to Personal Essays

So I'm trying really hard to come up with a good personal essay for medical school.  I have decided to share with you, the world, all of my work.  None of these, unfortunately, made the cut.  Some I wrote seriously, others I wrote to try to relieve my stress.  I will start with several starts to this year's essay that I won't use, at least not verbatim, and then I will put, at the end, the personal essay from last year that I am no longer using.

So it begins

Millions lay on the ground...dead.  If only a physician had found the cure to the zombie apocalypse before it was...too late.  I will be that physician.  Let me in.  It is your only hope.  All of your medical knowledge will amount to naught without my degree.  You caused this.  You started it, but I will finish it.  I am...Zarathustra...

My mustache will cure cancer.

One of my youngest memories was my grandma dying of kidney failure.  She received the best treatment possible, but she was over eighty years old and a poor candidate for a donor.  Her health deteriorated until treatment became too tiring and painful.  She decided to stop treatment and enter hospice care.  She died just a few weeks later.  I remember getting the call while I was playing at a friend's house.  That was the first major tragedy I remember in my life...

Why do I want to go to medical school?  I have had this dream.  I want to gain a medical degree.  I want to be able to become really good at what I do.  I want to really be able to help people.  And then I really just want to walk into any room anywhere and be able to say, "Hello, I'm the doctor."

Just "the doctor"...

 *To be read in that deep radio announcer's voice* In a world of fear, a world of disease, a world where millions upon billions of organisms main goal is to kill every human life, a world without hope, without healing, there is one man.  The Physician.  He stands between the living and the dead.  He alone can prevent the oncoming storm...

This is the oncoming storm!

And finally, below is last year's full essay:

I believe in hope, and it is the primary reason that I want to practice medicine. Hope defies what is impossible. Things happen or they do not, but hope believes firmly in something that is not yet. I want to bring hope to those who are without it. I do not know yet whether that hope will be in a cancer patient, hoping for remission; a parent, hoping for an effective vaccine; a mother, hoping for a healthy child; someone who has fallen, hoping to walk again; or simply someone sick, hoping to feel well. I do know, however, that in practicing medicine I can bring hope. I have known that it is the field that I have wanted to enter into for many years. I know that my capabilities are only human, but there is great hope in that statement, as well. It was only a human that discovered the vaccine to small pox, saving millions upon millions of lives. It was only a human that developed the arterial bypass surgery that continues to save lives to this day. I have hope in what only humans can do. To give hope, to preserve hope, and to seek hope is at the heart of medicine. All who go to a physician do so in hope. More hope is found in a doctor's office or a hospital than anywhere on earth. Physicians are the guardians of hope. One must not give false hope, but one must always consider hope in the impossible.

I spent two years in Mexico City, spending a great deal of my time providing support to members of my peer group who needed medical care. I tried to support them as best I could as they got knee surgeries, back surgeries, and underwent many tests that determined what was causing them pain. I saw them able to return to what they loved to do because of the hope and care provided to them. I remember specifically spending time with one of my friends who had severe leg pain as he received different tests to determine the cause of his problems. I watched as he received treatments to try to manage and correct his symptoms. I saw the hope that grew in him as his pain faded away in response to the treatments. Although I felt like medicine was the field for me before this, my love of it began to solidify at that time. When I returned, I used the medical Spanish that I had learned to help others receive proper care by interpreting at the University of Utah Hospital and the Maliheh Free Clinic. I became a part of the team that provided hope in a small way as I served there. I recognized the hope that both the physicians here in the United States and I provided as being the same as the hope that I saw in Mexico. Furthermore, the many hours talking with patients about the care they were receiving and with the physicians about the care they were providing made me certain that medicine was the field for me.

I believe that the impossible has produced some of the most beautiful, wonderful things. The earth is impossible. It is a planet hung perfectly with others, pulled and pushed in just the right orbit that prevents us from frying or freezing. Life thrives on this impossible planet. Life is impossible. A collection of amino acids, minerals, and chemicals, produce thought, love, and life. It is precisely that which is impossible that is worth protecting. In 1600 if someone were to propose that almost all illness was caused by microscopic life forms and sub-microscopic bits of code, we would have thought them crazy. Such an idea was impossible. That we would one day be able to fight these tiny invaders would be completely mad. That which is impossible, however, is now a reality. Fifty years ago if someone were to say that mechanical robots would be used in surgery, that machines would aid anesthesiologists, that controlled chemical structures could deliver drugs to specific cells, we all would have thought it impossible. But the impossible has happened and is now becoming commonplace. We must always nurture a hope in the impossible. I want to be a part of that nurturing. I am committed to providing the hope that only a physician can. I know it will be a very hard path, but it is the impossible that is always worth the fight.

Nope...