I have always wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. I have always felt that the most important thing in this world is to live – we could be busy with our everyday lives that we forget to experience the simple joys of breathing and being well with the full use of our senses, but when illness or some disease strikes, then we are jolted back to the reality that our time here on earth is finite and that we should make the best out of it. With this in mind, I believe that health is of utmost importance. How else can we experience life to the fullest, share our time with loved ones, when our bodies, the very vessels by which we move and accomplish things is damaged? There is so much beauty all around us to be enjoyed, so many things to do, dreams to be fulfilled. Being alive and well by taking care of our bodies is the least we can do for ourselves.
By now you must have an idea of how I view life – I see it in everything as a recurring miracle. I see the green of leaves and immediately I see past the beauty they bring to my eyes – I see a far more complicated beauty happening at that very instant, the process of photosynthesis. It is amazing how something seemingly simple as a leaf can manufacture its own “food”. Equally amazing is how these same leaves produce our much needed oxygen. I have taken Biology in high school, and it was my teacher who helped me see the miracle in nature. Biology, she always told us, is more than just plants and animals. Biology is all about the miracle of life. Biology deals with everything that has life – humans, animals, plants, even bacteria. In Biology I learned about human anatomy and the minute details of bodily processes.
How from an egg and a sperm, where there was nothing there can emerge a human being, a cell of limitless possibility developing itself cell after cell until limbs and features emerge, until it develops consciousness and knowledge of the world. If one takes the time to step back and look at the grandeur of the world around us – the interconnection of all the things, how everything is in place and nature is in order – one will be moved to protect this beauty and this life as well.
Moreover, two personal experiences add significant weight to my decision to pursue Biology and Medicine. Once, driving along Highway 395 I saw a major accident. A car has swerved violently and there was a girl inside. Out of concern, I went out of my car and hurried to help the girl. Somebody called 911 but something cut her stomach and she was bleeding profusely. All I could think of was how to stop the bleeding and I finally took my sweater off and wrapped it around her. Somehow, my efforts helped or else by the time she reached ER she would be in a very critical condition because of too much blood loss, if she hadn’t died of it already.
An experience closer to my heart is the one time when my younger brother drowned in the beach. It was past six in the evening and the lifeguards had gone home for the day. My brother, young as he was, drifted far too off in the ocean, and as the waves buoyed him farther away, panicked and drowned. We were able to retrieve him, and I performed a CPR to bring him back. It was a close encounter with death, and it terrified us. We were so scared and then so relieved that he was okay. We were only grateful that he was alive and breathing again.
These two events altered my life so completely and it pushed me to learn more about life and become a doctor. The great feeling after you know that you have touched another’s life is something that I would like to experience every day after I leave medical school. Thus, I have made it my business to study life in all its forms, and what better way to do it than studying Biology, that branch of science that deals with the miracle of life? I believe that with a mastery of Biology, I will be better equipped to undertake the task of studying medicine, and thereafter the responsibility of saving lives.