Rough Draft

I am that spark that you’re looking for. I am that bubbly presence that makes the room come alive. I am full of energy, essence, and enthusiasm. It was my trials and tribulations that created my spark. It’s hard to say exactly what my spark can do for me in the future, but what can be said about that spark is that it makes for great determination within my personality.

I’ve had many opportunities to commiserate my situations and become less than I am right now, but I chose the high road in every instance. I overcame my obstacles not through sheer will, or the most back breaking work imaginable, but just by being me. From an early age, I overcame and disproved a male chauvinistic father. I was constantly led to believe that there was no way I could ever be good enough. Looking back I realized that my father was too hard on me because no matter how good the grade was, or how well the game went, I had never done enough. This, coming from a man who had never graduated college, became hypocrisy in my mind. That hypocrisy set a drive within me on full-tilt. I knew that not only was I going to graduate college, but I was going on to become a professional. The concluding divorce have had both negative and positive contributions to my journey through higher education. Firstly, and on the positive side of things, it taught me to deal with certain kinds of oppression. I understand that I am already a privileged person being that I’m a white female in a middleclass family. But I am a female, and my dream is to become a surgeon. Given the total population, only a small percentage of them are surgeons, and of them an even smaller percentage are female. I believe that having had to deal with a constant bombardment of unfounded blatant male chauvinism will help me persist in the medical world. I’ve developed a tough shell. However, there is a dark side to this tale of triumph, and it brings me to my second point about my chauvinistic father. He gave me a skewed perception of men, and perhaps instilled in me the cockiness which he carried himself. These two things, cockiness and misperception, will do you only a small amount of good in this world. So it has been to my advantage, despite the hypocrisy and abuse to see and strive for the lighter side of things.

I have also overcome physical obstacles. Since I was eleven, I’ve had asthma. I have not let it stop me from competing in challenging sports. In high school I ran track and competed in varsity soccer from my freshman year on. I did so well I held records in track. During the seasons, I always trained harder than the other girls to overcome the effects that asthma had on my lungs. Then, leading up to college, I began competing in club soccer. Club soccer is select; I tried out and beat other girls make my team. I played for four years in St. Louis which was taxing. This is where I was recruited to play Division II college soccer. In college I was known as the girl who worked hard. I may not have been the best technical player but I ran further, faster, and harder than anyone else. I started every single game, save one to injury, all four years. My asthma was never a burden on me per say, and I have never held it as an excuse. I treated my asthma the same way I teated my father’s chauvinism, as an accelerant to drive me forward. I believe that the physical strength I accumulated through overcoming my problems with asthma is indelible to my presence in a room or in a crowd. For that, I am proud.

My aforementioned weaknesses had just as much influence in creating my spark as my strengths; but, I tend to respect, favor, and cater to my strengths. My strengths came about through the actions of my mother and my grandmother. They were my foundations; both took such pride in my achievements that it was worth it to me to go that extra mile, if only just for them. My mother has sacrificed a lot in her life to give me what I need. As I said, I was a rather athletically talented teen, and I developed a passion for soccer. However, there was no soccer program in the small town where I grew up in Missouri, so my mother signed me up to play competitively in St. Louis. She spent countless hours on the road driving me to practices, and spent hundreds of dollars in new uniforms, gas, and food. My playing was a financial burden on the family; I knew she was fighting my father’s wishes to keep me in the league. But she did all of this because she thought it might help me pay my way through college. As it turns out, I was recruited to play soccer at Newberry College. During my stay in South Carolina, my grandmother, who still supported me by writing me one letter a week with a little money inside, was diagnosed with ALS. Over the course of the next three years, her penmanship worsened, and her voice became so breathy that I could not hear it over the phone. But she absolutely insisted that I stay in class; not only did I have to stay in school; I must also turn in every single homework assignment. She would not hear of me leaving classes to come see her, she also would not hear of me feeling sorry for her. I was to do my duty in college and get that degree; she used to tell me that it would be a waste of good brain for me to not become a doctor. She didn’t know it, but she was actively teaching me to perform under heavy emotional stress. I was torn between school and home and the only place I wanted to be was back there with her. In the end, I took one Friday off from class to attend her funeral up in Missouri. This was one month before I graduated with a degree in Biology and Chemistry. With these unselfish actions, my grandma taught me to separate emotion and work. I miss her encouragement and her loving reinforcement of my finer qualities; mostly I just miss her. It is therefore easy to see that not only was I birthed and raised by these wonderful women, but I owe them my education and my will power, and therefore my spark. The day I walk across the medical school graduation stage, and see my mother’s smile, will be a grand day indeed.

My perseverance has already been challenged, here in the application process. I have not been accepted a number of years now, and it is getting both mentally and financially exhausting. For any one of a number of reasons, acts of god, man, and naivety got in the way of me being the best potential candidate that I could be. But, I have made up my mind that enough is enough and I am no longer shooting for just ‘getting in’ I am competitive. I am the person that you want in your school. I am the student that you will enjoy teaching in class. I want to be accepted bad enough that I have come back time and time again. I have spent thousands of dollars teaching myself the correct way to master MCATS. I have sacrificed countless job offers from various companies because I don’t want to work if it is not as a doctor. Anything less than what I know is my best will not do for me. I know that everything else that came before this application round is not fruitless, because it is merely one more obstacle that, like the others, I will overcome. I believe that I can and will push through anything with my vigor and background experience with pressure and perseverance.

Medical school will be the springboard to my professional career. I’m working to one day become a surgeon. I believe that my strong upbringing that led to my awesome education has prepared me for the trials that could keep me from achieving my career goal of become a successful surgeon. I want my peers to respect my thoroughness and professionalism; and I want my patients to have confidence in my procedures and my work. One day, with much hard work, I will be the model female surgeon in a largely male-dominated profession. Hopefully my persevering, bright personality will push me to achieve that goal.

Upon graduation from college, not only did I graduate cum laude, but I received a rather prestigious award. The W.L. Laval award is presented to one graduating female and male a year. Its winners are senior student athletes who are judged to be outstanding in athletics, scholarship, character, and leadership. This was the cherry on top of the proverbial ice cream for me. It let me know that all of my efforts were worth something; that all of my mothers and grandmothers encouragement finally paid off. But I will not stop at this, the award was merely a reminder at how much work it takes to win something so prestigious. I will push on, I will persevere, and I will get into medical school. So I ask you, will you let me work hard for you? Will you give me the chance to shine; to use my vigor for good? Could this incoming class use an extra catalyst? I am that spark, that catalyst and I will not disappoint. Thank you for your time.