Stage presence - Free sample medical personal statement
Free sample medical personal statement
Tell us more about who you are. You may provide additional information that expands your self-identity where gender identification, racial and/or ethnic self description, geographic origin, socioeconomic, academic, and/or other characteristics that define who you are as you contemplate a career that will interface with people who are similar AND dissimilar to you. You will have the opportunity below to tell us how you wish to be addressed, recognized and treated.
Holding my pose on the stage of the Bardavon Opera Theater, I looked out into the darkness and felt the heat beating down from the lights. In the brief moments of silence, I could feel fear creep into my psyche. Then the music filled the room, and I dove into the movement. There was no future or past, just my training and the other dancers. Dance has always centered me during difficult and unsteady times.
I started dancing in my middle school cafeteria after school and fell in love with it, dedicating more than ten years to training in modern, contemporary, ballet, and jazz dance. Dance allowed me to perform and expand my artistic passion, but it required money. My free time in high school was spent washing dishes, tutoring, nannying, and interning at a laboratory to pay for dance. I made sacrifices to make dance a priority, dancing throughout high school at the top studio in Albuquerque and continuing my training at Vassar College.
Dancing freed my mind and pushed my body to the limit, forcing me to muster up all the energy that I had to offer and giving me an escape from academic and financial pressures. Dance was my therapy. The studio became a sacred place where I could release the stresses of trying to help my single mother financially support my younger sister. There I explored my femininity and Mexican heritage without fear of prejudice, and I learned about different identities through my fellow dancers.
Throughout a creative process, artists reveal their deepest vulnerabilities. During rehearsals, my friends and I would share how our identities brought a uniqueness to our quality of movement. Kerri’s Jamaican upbringing influenced her sharp movement, while her blackness shaped her stage presence. Ana’s passion came from her Uruguayan mother and dance connected her to her heritage. Through dance, Jake grew to understand his sexuality as a gay man. These conversations wove together a tapestry of our backgrounds. Our artistry thrived because of our differences.
Medicine becomes more effective when identities intermix, weave together to listen and learn from each other's stories. My dance training fostered a love of working with and learning from people of all backgrounds. It has made me a smarter, more confident person. A future physician who can not only reconcile our differences, but celebrate them.
Describe the community in which you were nurtured or spent the majority of your early development with respect to its demographics. What core values did you receive and how will these translate into the contributions that you hope to make to your community as a medical student and to your career in medicine? What improvements do you think might make the described community better?
As a Latina woman from a low-income family in the Southwest who has attended an elite college in New York, I take pride in my diverse background and will aspire to help my patients feel similarly. Experiencing the stark differences between the public schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Vassar College gave me a unique understanding of the discrepancies within education. It also renewed my appreciation for the melting pot that was public school, which provided me with a powerful skill to interact with a wide variety of people.
Arriving at Vassar was a jarring experience. My peers spoke of classical paintings as if discussing the next trending boy band. My new friends told stories about the rigorous studies at their private schools. I felt out of place. I missed green chile and the Sandia Mountains that border my hometown. While studying at a private Northeastern college, I found that my grade school education lacked exposure to art history, computer science, and other subjects.
Growing up in Albuquerque with limited financial resources, I learned to always keep an open mind about people and to never underestimate the power of perseverance. To survive and succeed in the public school system, I learned from people with various levels of education and generally low-income backgrounds. There was a mezcla of ethnicities: Native American, Latinx, European, Southeastern Asian, African. My struggles were put into perspective, and I found that my peers and coworkers faced their own struggles with a similar resilience that had grown inside me. These lessons of perseverance became ingrained in me, as I faced many obstacles in college.
After my second year of college, I opened the familiar, heavy metal doors to my high school and wandered down the windowless hallway. The walls were covered with colorful posters. The aroma of sloppy joes floated through the air. I made my way to the isolated science hallway to my first chemistry class. My teacher, almost exactly where I had remembered her last, was grading tests on the blacktop tables. We talked about Vassar, and the subjects new to me like Sociology or Latinx Studies. I would have loved to have been offered these courses in high school. I told her about a program for low-income students that assigned new students with mentors, and how our high school should implement something similar. The bell rang, and I returned to the familiar hallway.
I am thankful for my public school education because I learned the most from my community. My experience with the diverse population in our state provided me with important lessons about respect for individuals from different backgrounds; and I learned to keep an open mind about the needs and the intentions of others. As a medical student, and later as a practicing physician, I expect to employ those skills in order to understand each of my patients as individuals. I draw upon lessons learned during my education to remind myself that I can always listen to, learn from and care for people in need.