Who I Want to Be Essay Example
As kids, being asked the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was exciting. The answer choices were limitless because the decision was so far away. However, as I got older, that question began to frighten me. By the end of my junior year of high school, I felt like I had to have a definite answer, and I did not. By then I knew that I would attend Southeast Missouri State University, so when people asked, I would tell them I was going for business.
I remember telling people it was a manipulative major and that why I chose it. I knew it was not what I wanted, but it felt better than not having an answer at all. I knew even as I told people I was majoring in business that I loved science. I had enrolled in nearly every science class available at my high school, and cared a great deal about health and nutrition. I didn’t want to pursue a health career because, while I received good grades in high school, I had to study far more than my other classmates to which school came easy for. I did not want to risk my higher education pursuing a difficult major, I wanted it easy.
My senior year I took an anatomy class and found a love for the material. I had enjoyed many classes before but not in the way that I love anatomy and physiology. With other subjects, there are word problems that are supposed to relate the material to the real world, but very few people actually buy twenty, four fluid ounce dish soaps, and have to divide them amongst six people. Anatomy and physiology actually felt real to me. I was actually using what I learned to understand my own body, and that was exciting to me. Before my orientation date in February of 2017, I changed my declared major to biomedical sciences. I will graduate a year early in May of 2020. I hope to attend medical school to pursue a medical doctorate specializing in dermatology, or health and nutrition.
I surmise that what has really drawn me to science, and made me passionate about pursuing my dream was my realization of how sick we are making ourselves. I have struggled with my body image for long time, as many do. The prevalence of social media has only served to worsen it, not just for me, but for everyone. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all overflowing with edited pictures, and it is in our nature to compare ourselves to them. Not only social media, but advertisements on television, selling goods and services, by selling sex. People are trying to look like what they see on social media and television, despite these images being distortions of reality, and it is hurting them.
On top of that, we are no longer eating real foods. We cannot bother to read the ingredient labels on our foods because we can no longer pronounce half of the ingredients. We are becoming addicted to man-made components of food that only drive our desire to eat more of them. Even when we are no longer hungry, we are still not satisfied.
It frightens me. Obesity rates are at an alarming number, and eating disorders are becoming so prevalent that we are recognizing them as diets in opposition to what they truly are. I do not want to be a doctor who diagnoses and prescribes, I want to be a doctor who treats, who explains the illness, and how the treatment works. I want to help. I want to love my patients, and help them love themselves too.
That is why I also have a keen interest in dermatology and the cosmetic side of dermatology. I find the skin extremely fascinating. It is as thin as five sheets of paper, yet it protects all of our other organs. It is our most vulnerable layer, and what people see when they see us. I have read many books about the aging of our skin and how we can slow, even reverse, the effect. I find it incredible that modern medicine had allowed us to not only reduce the effect of aging on our skin, but do so in a healthy way. They have developed cosmetic processes which are reduced in synthetic material, and increased in natural stimulants which boost the production of keratin and collagen in our skin; making us feel confident without destruction of our body’s natural processes.
I have felt unconfident many times in pursuit of my degree. I still get uneasy realizing that I might not make it to where I want to be. I know how badly I want it, and that fuels me to keep going. Yet, I rest assured knowing that wherever I do make it to, will be exactly where I am supposed to be with a degree in a field that I am truly passionate about.
