Why I want to be a doctor.

pre-medical students have known why you want to be a doctor, ever since they picked up their first toy
stethoscope. Others have had a singular catalytic event that changed their career goals forever. The
origins of my own desire to become a physician have been less dramatic, but equally sound. As a child,
whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered with a rainbow of
possibilities, including fireman, policeman, musician, and of course, doctor. Being a doctor appealed to
me because doctors seemed smart, responsible, helpful, and — in some vague sense I could not quite
define — “cool.” They cured the sick and fended off nasty diseases. They discovered new treatments
and dispensed old remedies. They eased the dying process, even occasionally pulling patients back from
the dead. It seemed like they could do just about anything.

As I grew older, I gained experience that shaped this childhood assessment of a doctor’s job into a more
realistic perspective; the more I learned about research and clinical work, the more confident I became
that I want to be a physician. In high school, I discovered that I excelled in the sciences. My aptitude and
interest grew simultaneously, fueling each other in a sort of feedback loop. I was thrilled to realize that
the biology, chemistry, and physics classes I enjoyed so much were fundamentally related to medicine; I
could both satisfy my love for the basic sciences while helping individual patients as a “cool” doctor. I
decided that I wanted to be a physician who also does basic science research.

Later, in college, I reaffirmed my affinity for research in the field of chemistry. Not only did I find the
subject matter fascinating, but the process itself also captivated me. I liked setting my own schedule,
learning at my own pace, and designing my own experiments. Some of my electives helped me to
consolidate my interests: my physiology class, for example, gave me an exhilarating introduction to the
vast and ever-changing body of medical knowledge. In order to cover a wide spectrum of information,
the class was taught by six professors, each with a medical degree, and each with his or her own
specialty. I found this class especially rewarding because it allowed me to understand the ways in which
my own body works, which I can apply to the diagnosis and treatment of specific diseases.