Scientific Research example essay topic

"Mom, I've decided I'm not going to medical school". As the gravity of my words sank into the ensuing silence, my intuition told me that they fell on deaf ears. Indeed, it would be a full two months and $200 in university long distance service bills until the finality of my decision not to apply to medical school had been adequately communicated. It shocks me to realize that it has been five years since I made that phone call, which I recall so vividly.

However, in these five years I've traveled the world and had the opportunity to serve and learn from destitute villagers in India, I've achieved a master's degree in neuropharmacology, I've lived through the painful discovery that my brother has an as-yet incurable neurodegenerative disorder-multiple sclerosis (MS), and I have come full circle to realize that there was a physician inside of me all along whom I am passionately excited to cultivate. As a child, it seemed like I was destined for medicine. For my mother, it might as well have been ingrained in my DNA. Ever since I could walk, I had been in and out of hospitals volunteering, observing, interacting and learning from the doctors and patients. Throughout high school I worked in two family practice clinics, a gastroenterology lab and in a surgeon's office. I'd taken patient histories and chief complaints, removed post-op stitches, scrubbed in and assisted in ER and outpatient OR procedures.

When I entered college at the University of Southern California, I breezed through 2 years of pre-medical coursework without thinking twice about my de jure destiny. Then in my 3rd undergraduate year, I revolted. A sense of individuality grew inside of me, and with it an intense desire to carve out my own place in the world, to find myself, to become a man, to realize my independence and to exercise my freedom to choose my own destiny without the trammels of parental pressure. Despite 2 years and 1000 miles of distance between my family and myself, I had not yet cut the umbilical cord; this autumn of 2002 was the beginning of my matriculation into adulthood and taking responsibility for my life. Since then, undoubtedly the most important lesson I've learned is that your own problems melt away when you are given the joyful blessing to serve, heal, and feed others.

In 2003 I joined a non-profit organization centered in India whose purpose is to promulgate the ideal of inner peace and world peace. This organization has given me numerous opportunities to be of service in the US and abroad. My first summer in India in 2004 I traveled throughout this foreign land and discovered a culture and people who taught me how to be at self peace and in harmony with nature in the face of destitution. During that August, I was able to volunteer at the Kakusandha Hospital and Research Centre in the Himalayan foothill village of Ramoraj. There, I assisted Dr. Amar and Dr. Vijay in the ophthalmology clinic in everything from basic refractory corrections to cataract phagoemulsification surgery. I was shocked to learn that 80% of blindness is preventable.

The dedication and selfless efforts of these doctors who worked long hours and took patients 7 days a week inspired me deeply and planted the seed in my heart which would take another 2 years to flower into my realization that I need to be pursuing a life as a physician. Prior to departing for India, in my remaining years at USC I delved intensely into my latent childhood interest in brain science. During my junior and senior years, I was fortunate to work in the prestigious lab of Richard P. Quinn studying basic mechanisms of classical conditioning and somatotopic representation of the engram for classical conditioned motor response learning. My rewarding experiences in this lab under the mentorship of then graduate student Colbert Winger gave me the resolve that I too could push the frontiers of neuro scientific research. When I returned from India, I worked with Colbert in forming his biotech startup company, while preparing for admissions into the doctoral program in neuroscience at UCSB. It was exciting for me, a relative novice in scientific research and in business to apply whatever innate talent I had to developing a successful company.

My role was to develop the scientific strategy and to that end we patented a methodology for investigating novel biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease (AD) using a powerful transgenic mouse model and bioinformatics systems. In 2005 I began the doctoral program in neuroscience at UCSB. Galvanized by the trauma of my brother's diagnosis of MS, I felt a strong desire to understand the basis of neurodegenerative disease. I needed to develop a solid foundation as a biomedical researcher so that I could apply my skills to look for novel therapies to cognitively and economically devastating disorders like AD and MS. Despite learning the fundamentals of scientific inquiry at the molecular biology level, at the end of my first year, I realized that I could not spend my life in a lab; I reconnected with a deeper component of my personality which craves direct one-to-one interaction, and that indescribable feeling of having the power to ameliorate the suffering of those in need.

In some ways my journey has brought me full circle, yet when I contemplate more deeply about it, the path has been more of an ascending spiral. Though my career aspirations have returned to medicine, I am seeing things from the higher vantage point of a sliver of wisdom of life experience. My choice is firmly rooted in self-knowledge, and this has given me a kind of laser focus towards my goals that can only come from clear-minded passion. Five years ago, I thought that I would make a good doctor. Today, I know that there is no life I am more thoroughly suited for. I'm grateful for this knowledge and can't wait to begin the journey.

I'm not even bothered when my mom starts every conversation with "I told you so!".