I used to envision following the march of cardiologists and trauma surgeons in the ER or studying the patience and acumen of obstetricians in the maternity ward. Yet, volunteering in New York mostly came down to carrying samples to the lab. With virtually no patient or physician contact, what would help me understand my place in medicine?
The answer was travel. I decided to study abroad in Germany. At a nursing home, I changed diapers, brought fresh water to residents, and led activities. I loved the fulfillment of contributing to the quality of the residents’ days. These interactions returned my focus to the primary importance of human engagement in the practice of medicine. Had I needed to travel to Germany to confirm my interest in clinical medicine?
Apparently, yes.
An internship in Dr. Becker’s lab at the University of Heidelberg brought me to understand basic research. For instance, we know chemotherapeutic resistance prevails in human carcinomas. Dr. Becker’s research was a response to chemoresistance, even though similar research had previously led to unachievable conclusions. In particular, we sought answers to why cancers develop mechanisms to overcome apoptosis (cell death) despite chemotherapy while aiming to identify tumor-specific characteristics which determine disease progression. Funding for Dr. Becker’s research was neither endorsed nor supported by private or corporate interests, nor was it driven by cost-benefit analysis. At the very least, this was freeing, if not ideal.
Cultural variances brought to light the value of perspective-taking as a human skill befitting physicians. Understanding humanity, after all, has a moral purpose. According to the AMA, physicians “uphold medicine’s social contract with humanity.” Travel helped me understand this. On a recent trip to Egypt, I visited a small village on the Nile centered around a large textile factory. The village was impoverished, yet children worked in clean and cheerful conditions weaving rugs to prepare them with a trade and to help support their families. I recoiled with visions of child labor sweatshops but shortly realized my own ethnocentrism, my own absolutism. Egypt’s mediation of poverty with “safe” child labor collided with my American standards and references; it led me through a humbling, firsthand lesson in cultural relativism which requires “perspective-taking.” In other words, self-assurance without introspection is an unexamined life, as Socrates warns us: the only good is true knowledge bound by deep observation. Travel has taught me to foster an open mind rather than a reactive one, brought to light the inherent privilege of standing in another’s shoes, and the understanding of what it means and why it is so important to become a conscious physician.
This applicant ties their human growth through the effective use of short anecdotes based on travel experiences. We sense the writer’s youthful disappointment during early volunteer experiences and mature satisfaction working in direct patient care and research.. Additionally, this applicant effectively links the expansive benefits of travel to their medical ambitions: travel as an opportunity for growth and understanding enabling readers to easily imagine the applicant as an attentive, committed, and talented individual with characteristics desirable for a future physician.
What makes this essay work?
We meet the writer at a loss over their volunteer work in New York. Once contrasted by the hands-on opportunities in a nursing home overseas, we know the writer’s dilemma, “had I needed to travel to Heidelberg, Germany, to confirm my interest in clinical medicine? “With this framing, we appreciate the essay’s theme.
The writer’s reactions to various encounters reveal a maturing mind-set: the experience volunteering in a New York hospital versus the feeling of being “needed and wanted” in the nursing home in Germany; the broad view of basic research, how it can expand knowledge – even without the promise of immediate profit or field relevance at the University of Heidelberg. These reflections demonstrate a thoughtfulness born of experience.
Travel has had an intrinsically broadening impact on the applicant and stimulated an “open mind” to people and situations. This kind of sophisticated view is a desirable trait to adcoms. Explaining cultural relativity as a lesson in personal growth evokes an introspection that is refreshing.
Although this essay’s foundation is built on the writer’s sincere and dedicated aspirations for a medical career, they allowed themselves the space to write about the broadening intellectual benefits of travel, linking those benefits to professional potential. Even when writing about children working in a factory in Egypt, this applicant brings an expanded mind-set and greater cross-cultural understanding that will no doubt benefit them in their career.
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