Growing up with a surgical nurse mom, I had only seen the noble and glorified version of medicine: people saving lives. However, after seeing and working with sick people who desperately sought medical support, I realized that the medical system, at best, saves lives selectively.  At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was dissatisfied with the limited opportunities the hospital I volunteered at provided and wondered whether medicine was really for me. Not only did I question whether it...

I watched Grey's Anatomy in kindergarten, not because I was interested in grown-ups fixing patients in the day and flirting at night, but because my mom was studying both English and nursing. As a freshman with only a glamorous notion of medicine, I explored the human body. At Georgetown University's summer medical academy, I dissected in awe human cadavers with my right hand and pinched my nose with my left. After the lecture, medicine lost the glamour, but I found...