Darfur Personal Statement

In a crowded waiting room located in a working class South Florida neighborhood, an atmosphere of desperation, tension, and urgency swathed the room. The few doctors rushed around, overwhelmed by the number of sick kids, a cacophony of cries and screams pervaded while mothers pleaded. To exacerbate the situation, I was exposed to this malaise normally characteristic of 3rd world countries right in my backyard. As I bore witness to this dysfunctional system in front of me at the age of 10, I realized just how few doctors there are, and with conviction and sentiment, asserted to my mother that I wanted to become a doctor serve these people.
From this day, I developed an impassioned interest in the human body and medicine. I knew that if I wanted to fulfill my ambitions to serve the underprivileged in my community, I must not relent and start on the path immediately. I would browse through volumes of books regarding the human body and disease at the local library, clandestinely smuggle my cousin’s anatomy textbook into my room at night, and unremittingly question my middle and high school biology teachers about the functions of the human body. With every page I turned, …show more content…
The highly publicized crisis in Darfur, South Sudan, and Syria greatly fueled my already furtive motivation to study medicine. Images of women suffering or dying from birth complications, malnourished children succumbing to preventable diseases such as malaria, and the lack of doctors in those regions to serve the ill in those regions greatly moved me. After many years exposed to the dearth of medical care in certain parts of the world and seeing how important Doctors are in those regions, I decided that I wanted to study medicine to not only help serve the poor in my community, but also to volunteer in my spare time overseas to help train local doctors or provide direct medical care for the