Martial arts and medicine. They
seem worlds apart, but they both have played significant roles in my life and for reasons
that are surprisingly similar. They both offer challenge, require great discipline, and
necessitate a goal-oriented approach.
I first became involved with the martial arts
when I was only 13 years old. At that time I began studying karate in my hometown in
northern California. Even then I was a goal-oriented individual who was attracted to the
step-by-step progression involved in studying karate. Within a year I had earned a brown
belt (the next-to-highest ranking) and was actually serving as an instructor at the karate
academy where I had learned the sport. Dedication, discipline, and physical and mental
prowess were behind my success, which included being the youngest person in the area to
attain the brown belt.
In college I became involved in Tae Kwon Do,
the Korean counterpart of karate. This sport, too, requires patience, determination, and a
clear mind in addition to physical strength, endurance, and agility. Within a year I had
become president of my university's 80-member Tae Kwon Do club, which ranks among the top
sports clubs on campus. In assuming this position I began to have the opportunity to test
myself as a leader as well as an athlete.
One of the reasons I became interested in
medicine is that it, too, requires a meticulous, goal-oriented approach that is very
demanding. Of course, it also happens that the substance of the profession holds strong
appeal for me, both in terms of the science and the potential for serving others who are
in need.
Most of my exposure to the profession has
occurred within the areas of surgery and emergency medicine. After first serving as an
emergency medicine volunteer technician at a northern California hospital (where I had a
moving experience with a young girl's death), I acquired the EMT-1A/CPR certifications and
then worked as an Emergency Medical Technician-1A during a subsequent summer. This job was
a fascinating, educational, and high-pressure experience that exposed me to the realities
of medicine as practiced in crisis situations.
My extensive involvement with cardio thoracic
surgery research over the last three years, first as a volunteer technician and currently
as a staff research technician, has further fueled my desire to become a physician. I have
had to rely upon my own ingenuity and problem solving skills as well as what I have
learned in the classroom, and this has been exciting. One of the more unusual aspects of
my work has involved me directly in the procedure of heterotopic heart transplantation in
rats. This precise and technically demanding procedure encompasses microsurgery and
usually is conducted only by residents. In fact, I am the only undergraduate student doing
this procedure, which has shown me the extent of both my manual dexterity and capacity for
learning sophisticated techniques.
I have been fortunate enough to have had the
opportunity to participate and contribute in almost every way during experiments, from
administering anesthesia and performing extensive surgical preparations to analyzing the
data obtained and operating monitoring and recording equipment, ventilators, and the
heart-lung machine.
I am a somewhat shy individual, but I have
found that within the medical environment my shyness evaporates. The opportunity to help
others one-on-one is so rewarding and comfortable for me that I feel very much at ease,
regardless of with whom I am working. I think one of the particularly attractive aspects
of medicine for me, especially within such specialties as internal medicine and
obstetrics/gynecology, is the potential for forming close, lasting, meaningful
relationships with a wide array of patients.
For me, medicine emerges as the perfect avenue
for indulging my impulses to contribute, to be involved with science, and to establish
important links with others at both critical and noncritical moments in their lives.
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