Grad's guide to graduate admissions essays - Colleen Reding 2015
Rush medical college
Medicine/nursing/health
“Give me 10. If you don’t do it now, you’ll regret it!” yells the coxswain of our Varsity 8 as we stroke through the 1,300 meter mark. Our opponent’s boat is 4 seats up in the homestretch, with 700 meters to go. The lactic acid has been building up in my arms, and my leg muscles are searing at this pace. My mind is focused on the relentless beat of the coxswain and the elemental drive to succeed. This is the culmination of countless hours of predawn training virtually every day from the August heat to the February freeze. In this moment, 5 1/2 minutes seems like a lifetime. But I’ve made a commitment to my team and myself to leave nothing behind. As my oar bends against the rushing water for the last time in that race, I know that my teammates and I have pulled every ounce of energy out of our bodies and left it all floating somewhere in the rippling Potomac.
Even before coxswains and racing shells, it was always athletics that sparked my interest in the medical field. Football and wrestling had provided me with the firsthand opportunity to learn about bone grafts, broken tibias and ankles, pulled muscles and infections. My countless hours spent with doctors, medical personnel, and trainers provided me with a front row seat to my very own “before and after” commercial. I was fascinated by their knowledge and ability to reconstitute my damaged body. In the wake of my own orthopedic knee surgery, I experienced how a prolonged lack of physical health could affect a person’s psyche as well as performance.
Wanting to learn more about how treatment of a part could better the whole person, I began shadowing Dr. Bob Patek from the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute. From witnessing the very human aspect of one-on-one clinical work, to observing in the operating room a hamstring being spliced and manipulated to function as an ACL, I was able to see the entire process that I had previously experienced as a patient, but now through a new, clinical angle. In the time spent with Dr. Patek and his patients, I constantly saw how a caring physician could soothe what was once a worried patient, putting her at ease even when discussing the prospect of something as distressing as a double knee replacement. It was these experiences that turned my interest in medical processes into a desire to be a care provider like Dr. Patek.
At this point, medicine began to weave its way into different and unexpected areas of my life. Seeking new angles for my own healing, I began to explore oriental treatment techniques, like acupuncture, which piqued my interest in Chinese culture and inspired me to begin my study of the Chinese language. The difficulties that came with my time-intensive interest in Chinese taught me that I could never study or work hard enough at something that was important to me. Even after 3 years of language classes, I will be going to China for the second time this summer to improve my speaking skills and support my interest in Chinese medicine. While the steady pressure of my rigorous academic and year-round crew schedules have often tried my dedication, I’ve learned to become more organized and efficient. I know that my physically and mentally arduous lifestyle will aptly prepare me for the demands of a medical vocation.
Athletics has pulled me into the world of medicine, so it seems natural that it should be the avenue through which I could influence the health of my community. While I have worked as a “dark room” assistant to radiologists at the Washington Hospital Center, I prefer the person-to-person nature of my community service because it makes the most of my socially engaging personality, honed as the youngest boy in a family of seven. I’m a member of Grassroot Hoyas, an organization established and run by student-athletes that uses the role model status of college athletes as a platform from which to spread HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention in the DC area. I have come to identify myself so strongly with this program because it not only seeks to educate at-risk youth living in my greater community, but also provides me with an opportunity to use my athletic background as a vehicle to affect this endemic health issue through social change. In a city that has 11 times the national average of people living with HIV, it seems amazing that many of the adolescents here have been raised in an environment that doesn’t acknowledge the present danger posed by HIV/AIDS. Though the goal of these 10-week programs is to teach the children life skills that will help them make healthy decisions, I feel as though I am benefiting just as much from my time spent with these young students.
Though I may agree with these teens about who is the best hip-hop artist, socioeconomic differences between their background and mine are huge. Their very different pressures and experiences are ones that I had never been exposed to at that age. Teaching and playing with these kids has helped me mature as a person whose future plans are in the medical field. It has put my goals in medicine into perspective, reminding me that medicine can take form through social change and caring, personal interactions, as I had first seen with Dr. Patek. Though the gains this program has made in its pilot year are nothing less than impressive, Grassroot Hoyas lies entirely in the hands of student-athletes and it mandates our complete dedication to ensure its expansion and success in the coming years.
From early mornings that start at 6 a.m. on the cold and torrent Potomac, to days spent volunteering in inner-city DC, to evenings that end with me studying a culture on the other side of the world, I have found that the multifaceted groundwork I have laid helps propel me to achieve more. And as the coxswain in my head yells when I tire, I know that if I don’t put in the consistent dedication needed to accomplish my goals, I’m going to regret it.
