Personal Essay: Pursuing A Career In The Medical Field

I was never supposed to have the life that I have today. It was never in the plans for me to live in an urban city, go to a university, or even have the opportunity to further pursue a career as challenging as one in the medical field. Both sides of my families come from humble beginnings. My mother and father were born and raised in small villages in the outskirts of Armenia. Never would they dream of moving to a city like Los Angeles in their current lifetime. Yet what we perceive as completely unattainable was actually much more within our reach than we initially thought. With a hopeful perspective in mind, we applied for a Green-card and miraculously won.

Moving to the US, particularly the adjustment that come with migrating to a completely

Overall, the four years I spent at UCSB were some of the best years of my life. My first two years were really tough on me as a person, even though course wise they were a lot lighter. College taught me a lot about my capabilities and limits. For example, I learned that I work best under pressure, with a much heavier course load as opposed to having a non challenging schedule. Additionally, I learned so much about myself as an individual, which ultimately solidified my interest for pursuing a career in medicine. What I did struggled with in the beginning of my college career was believing that there was only one route leading to a career in the health field. I also found myself torn between biology and chemistry. I knew that I had a love for science, yet for some reason chemistry particularly stood out to me. That is why I decided to complete a bachelors of science in the field of chemistry, while taking the pre-med courses available at my universities such as genetics, physiology, and cell biology out of interest. Despite the fact that those said courses were very different from the ones I was taking from the chemistry department, I equally enjoyed them. That is when I realized the fact that biology and chemistry are two sides of the same coin, and being a chemist did not hinder my chances of pursuing a career in the health field. On the contrary, I believe that having a strong background in chemistry only

I am very thankful for the set of skills that research has provided me with. Being a research assistant for three years gave me the platform to grow as a scientist by teaching me the type of first hand experience which you just cannot learn in the classroom. Yet research did not turn out to be exactly what I truly desired to do in my heart. That is when I sat down and deeply though about what it is that I specifically wanted to do with my life career wise. I remembered how much I enjoyed taking pre med courses, along with my prior experience of volunteering at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center during my high school years. I remembered how delighted and comfortable I felt volunteering at the hospital, and decided to apply for the position once again. Once I got back into the hospital environment, I realized how much I belonged there all over again. I loved being there so much to the point where I wanted to spend all of my available volunteering at the hospitals and doctor’s offices around me. I even shadowed one of the best doctors in my home country of Armenia during our family vacation there. I think that having the desire to spend most of my summer and winter breaks somewhere in the health care environment, whether it was at hospitals, clinics, or private practice offices of physicians, is a testament for the passion that I have for the field of