My Path to Medicine

I am so excited to announce that I will be attending medical school at Wayne State University School of Medicine this summer 2021! I wanted to share with everyone my personal statement about why I chose medicine and why I want to become a physician:

I felt shaky as I sang, “Buzz, Buzz, taper les moustiques. Buzz, Buzz, taper les moustiques.” The crowd of 50 wide-eyed community members greeted my performance with giggles—an off-putting response to say the least—and finally clapped and chanted along in French about swatting away mosquitoes. Soon we were all laughing together.

 

I could never have pictured myself singing solo, let alone in French, in order to teach about the dangers of malaria. What started out as stomach-churning discomfort turned into a feeling of confidence, joy and acceptance as I realized that this activity had engaged the audience, led to a malaria discussion and ended with a swarm of questions. I do not sing, yet there I was warbling in a rural village in Togo, a small West African nation, serving as a community health volunteer.

 

I joined the Peace Corps to connect with people, build their trust and empower them to heal on their own terms. Becoming a physician and serving in the Peace Corps are decisions that stem from a similar motivation—to help foster health and growth within communities. Before becoming a doctor, which has been my constant aspiration, I wanted to explore what I had read about in textbooks as an anthropology major and be actively involved in how different cultures treat their sick. In college, I spent much of my time outside the classroom off-campus in Winston-Salem leading student teams in community development projects. The Peace Corps offered me the opportunity to combine my interest in health with my passion for service.

 

In Togo, discomfort became familiar as I adapted to an endless array of unfamiliar situations. This past March when heavy rains signaled the start of the wet season, I was overjoyed that the heat and dust would end. But strong, sudden winds and showers knocked down a cement wall in my village’s elementary school, killing a 10-year-old girl and injuring the principal and six students. In spite of my shock and sorrow, I quickly went to the crowded clinic to assist. The lone nurse was stitching up a young student with a large laceration across her head. I sat holding her hand, trying to distract her as she received stitches without anesthesia. As a future physician, I hope to sit with my patients, holding their hand either physically or symbolically, while I treat them.

 

Most of my Peace Corps projects in Togo focused on preventive health. Togo has more than 40 different languages and in many, there is not an equivalent translation for the concept of “prevention.” This made my job challenging. For example, while many people own mosquito nets, they do not fully understand how using one regularly to prevent malaria will benefit them in the long term. The head nurse and I partnered to tackle this barrier through training the community health workers from neighboring villages who would then disseminate the information in their own locales. We worked month after month with these young professionals and covered other topics such as maternal and neonatal health, hygiene, infant nutrition and HIV/AIDS prevention.

 

I was working with these healthcare workers to develop their skills, yet I often found myself learning along with them having to define illnesses that I had never heard about before or experienced. One such disease was “Kwashiorkor,” severe malnutrition, which was not something I had observed when I shadowed physicians in the United States. My curiosity and passion for medicine grew as I better understood how these maladies came to be, how they could be prevented and how they affected the individual and the community. A medical education would strengthen my competency to tackle the unknown and make me a more valuable resource to the communities I hope to help.

 

I learned to adapt to my audience, whether singing or teaching, and to adapt to the situation even in the face of tragedy and differing cultural norms. This ability to react quickly and appropriately to changing situations will serve me well as a doctor. In Togo I had a more supportive clinical role, and now I am ready to take on a leadership position as a physician and manage patients and their care.

 

I was honored to serve in Togo for 22 challenging and transformative months before I was evacuated due to Covid-19. Through the hours spent in the clinic and immersed in the local culture, I learned that medicine is far more than just diagnosis and treatment. I witnessed how gender inequity, language differences and patient respect affect the delivery of medical care. I am more committed than ever to be that agent who challenges barriers to good healthcare access. My service in the Peace Corps forced me to question my perspective of the world. The uncomfortable and the uncertain have become the most certain and meaningful experiences in my life.

 

I look forward to returning to underserved communities as a primary care physician. I aim to offer hope to patients, respecting their autonomy and advocating for them in the face of illness, fear and vulnerability.