The other night in my hut, I sat down and started making a
timeline for my graduate school applications. The common application for public
health opens in September, which is in less than two months. Once I realized
how soon I need to be making decisions about my future, I realized that I have
to do what I have been dreading: write my personal statement.
There is a very visible difference in my writing when I am
inspired versus when I am not. Since I downloaded the guidelines for the
personal statement last November, I’ve been waiting for inspiration to hit me.
I stare at my computer once every few weeks and hope that the right words will
flow. They never do. I have not been able to articulate why I want to study
epidemiology. I know in my heart that it is where I am meant to be, but that
will not win over an admissions committee.
I am meant to study epidemiology. I got a 5 on my AP
literature and composition test, which excused me from the second semester of
freshman seminar at Butler. I chose to take it anyway because I liked the
professor. I honestly never read any of the books because the essay prompts
didn’t require it, but something struck me about the last book, and I read it.
The book was Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Tracy Kidder, and it is the biography of Dr. Paul Farmer. From page one, I
knew. Shortly after reading the book I didn’t have to read in the class I
didn’t have to take, I changed my major to biology.
In my zoology class one day, I was talking to my lab
partner. By now, he and I both knew we needed to get involved in research, and
as a pre-med he had his pick of projects. I said that it was a shame that
Butler wouldn’t have any epidemiologists, and wondered what I could do. Our lab
assistant passed behind me at that point, and said: “Actually, we have one. My
friend Cam is working with her now. She’s in the pharmacy department. Dr.
Priscilla Ryder.” That day, I looked up her office and walked in the door. The
chances of the lab assistant walking by at that moment were slim, but it
happened.
As I knocked on the door of the person who would become my
combination mentor-slash-life-coach, my heart was racing. I had no clue what to
say. I awkwardly introduced myself. I was in luck that day. Dr. Ryder had just
been approached by a professor at IU who needed someone from a pharmacy school
to collaborate on a study. Because she does more projects than a whole team of
graduate students, she needed an assistant. There I was.
That project turned into multiple conferences, publications,
a paying job, and invaluable experience in epidemiology. The day I pushed the
registration button for that freshman seminar, I changed my own life. When I do
an interview, enter data, or even spend 5 hours with a team trying to figure
out a way to structure a matrix so that we get something significant in our
data, my heart lights up. I am happy. I call my friends and family after doing
those projects and excitedly give them a recap of what must bore normal people.
Sadly, nothing I just said really rang true for a personal
statement. I know that this is where I belong, but what can I say to convince
an admissions committee?
Tonight, finally, it hit me:
“I believe that it is a violation of basic human rights that
one in every two women of child-bearing age in any country in the 21st
century should suffer from HIV. I believe it is a further violation that due to
lack of access to hospitals women should die in their homes while giving birth.
I believe that choosing between deafness and death when deciding whether or not
to seek tuberculosis treatment is a choice that no person should have to make.
Finally, I believe it should be a crime that diabetes is a death sentence in
the developing world and a manageable condition in the first world. Health is a
basic human right, and I believe that the existing disparity in healthcare is
something that needs to be addressed immediately and aggressively.
I know myself. I am not going to write a bill and stand
before Congress and lobby for years for its passage. I am not going to run a
grassroots education campaign in a rural school for the rest of my life. I am
not going to make fundraising calls to raise money to implement an
international intervention. Those services are necessary, but they are not who
I am. I am going to run a qualitative study where, through a series of
interviews, I gain a deeper understanding of the issues facing a community.
When I have enough information, I will give a survey, and then I will enter
that data line by line and look for significant variables through any
statistical method that I know. When I know all that I can, I will work to
design a culturally appropriate intervention that is informed by the community
and for the community. What I see when I look at the existing health
disparities in our world is an opportunity for an epidemiologic study. That is
where I fit in the large puzzle that is public health, and that is how I dream
of making a meaningful contribution to our society.”
That’s why I’m in this. If an admissions committee reads
that and turns me down then, frankly, they do not deserve me and I would not be
a fit for their program. I am confident that the right school will read that,
in addition to the rest of the statement, and find a place for me.
Tonight, I am lit up with the excitement of knowing that
what I just wrote is perfect. With those two paragraphs, I have paved my
path to find my own corner of the world to change. The next step is finding the
school that will empower and educate me to be everything that I can be in the
field that I know the universe has intended me to be in since day one.
