Writing Assignment #5
Personal Statement
The interest I have acquired in science hasn’t always been a constant throughout my life. During my younger years I was fascinated by the arts; and in many ways I still am. This interest ranges from taking fifteen plus years of dance to being fully immersed in the arts by attending an arts high school. When applying for my undergraduate college, I was convinced that I wanted to study Dance as a major, but something changed that for me. A close friend of mine had been spending a great amount of time in and out of the hospital. I had been visiting her, and with my older sister working in that same hospital I was able to see a broad spectrum of how people are treated in healthcare. This is what drove me to shift towards studying science in undergraduate.
After graduating from high school, I continued my studies at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. When first starting off, I originally declared my major as Nursing but by my second semester of sophomore year I finalized it to Biology. To be honest, it took me quite a while to figure out what I exactly wanted to do with my future, career wise specifically. Both my mother and father hadn’t been through traditional college; and my older sister had stopped attending her four-year university after her freshman year. I was going into the process completely blind, but willing to see where it would lead me in the long run. The first year and a half of my college career sailed by smoothly. I was able to become certified in various medical regions; like Stop the Bleed and CPR/First Aid. While maintaining my course load, I also joined organizations on campus and started on their executive boards. This helped me obtain the leadership and communication skills to perform the best in my college career.
Quickly, however, my path took a turn halfway through the spring semester of my sophomore year. Spring break had been something I was looking forward to since school started back up in January, the chance to spend time with my family after the recent loss of my grandparents. That week-long break turned swiftly into two weeks and before I knew it, I was a full-time college student operating online classes from inside my childhood bedroom. As my senior year quickly approached, I became thoroughly interested in the process of disease growth and how to contain the spread of an unprecedented outbreak (like the one of COVID-19). In my second General Biology course, which I took right when COVID hit and everything went online, we were instructed to simply write a research paper on the ongoing research on SARS-Cov-2 and keep a journal on our thoughts through the quarantine process.
Lastly, in my years at Old Dominion University, I had the pleasure of working at a kindergarten through eighth grade school just down the street. Looking back this has helped immensely with my leadership skills as well as my multitasking ability. In working there, I worked the front desk and was able to take care of the kids in the morning as well. The discipline I have acquired to do this job will help me to further my development in graduate school. To say the least, this along with various other factors of my college career have helped me decide to ultimately attend graduate school to pursue a master’s degree in public health (MPH). With my dedication to seeing things through, and the curiosity that this pandemic has sparked in me I believe that choosing to further my education is the right-minded choice for me.