Personal Statement help needed!

[paba]

This is a really rough draft! Please help me with any comments or suggestions that you may have! Also, it is a little over 5,000 characters (including spaces) for CASPA so if anyone has any ideas of what to cut out that would be great! Thanks :) 

 

 

When I was younger, I always imagined myself having a summer job making ice cream sundaes with rainbow sprinkles or learning to tread water in order to save children from the dangers of the community pool. Although I never served ice cream sundaes or had the chance to save a drowning child during my summers spent at home during college, I gained more than fifteen grandparents. This was not what I expected to happen when I accepted the position as a resident assistant at Hill Assisted Living. When I was hired, my manager explained that I would be assisting elderly residents with grooming, feeding, bathing, and many more activities of daily living. I was completely unaware when I was hired of the lasting impact that the residents would have on my desire to pursue medicine. 

Working at Hill during my undergraduate career taught me a lot about the health care field and ignited my passion to help others. The work environment truly helped me grow in areas of reliability, professionalism, working with others, maturity, and adaptability. Also, working with the residents instilled in me the need to be caring, enthusiastic, and dependable and to sharpen my critical thinking skills. I still remember each one of the resident’s daily routines such as bed times, favorite outfits, what time of day they liked their showers, etc. Others provided a challenge to me which I feel that I dealt with compassionately and professionally. I will never forget when I broke through to one particularly stubborn patient by taking the extra time to sit with her and talk about how she used to make blueberry pies from scratch. From that day on, I felt that I had her trust which made caring for her much more efficient and holistic. Without this experience, I would not have developed the passion for the healthcare field and the desire to help others that I now encompass. I also learned a lot about myself through this experience. I gained new coping skills to efficiently cope with stress when caring for my residents pushed me to my limits and discovered that, while I enjoyed the autonomy that my job provided me when caring for residents, I thrived most when I had a supervisor to ask questions and bring concerns to in order to provide my senior residents with the most dignified and exceptional care possible. This realization has reaffirmed my desire to become a physician assistant. With the opportunity to work closely yet autonomously with a doctor, I am confident in my abilities to succeed in the physician assistant profession. 

In addition to caring for patients at the assisted living home, I have been a patient as well. As long as I can remember, I was always excited to get to go to the doctor’s office. Even if I was visiting my pediatrician for something as miserable as strep throat, the blood pressure cuffs, scales, and doctors all sparked a sense of curiosity in my young mind that has grown enormously since childhood. However, around the time I turned seventeen, I no longer felt a sense of awe walking into the doctor’s office. Instead, I felt dread. I did not want the doctor to weigh me. I knew when I stepped on the scale that she would notice my weight had dropped drastically. Logically, I knew I had lost weight, but I was terrified of gaining any of it back. After dodging the questions about my sudden weight loss for about a year, I was pulled out of The Ohio State University right after fall semester of my freshman year was finished and diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. I was sent to the hospital and spent a week listening to doctors talking about ECGs, bradycardia, and orthostatic hypotension. Having only began my college career, these words all went over my head and no doctor seemed to have the time to explain what they meant to me. It was not until a woman named Katie stopped by my room to see how I was doing that I learned the terminology. We ended up talking for over an hour and by the end of our conversation, I learned two very important things. The first was that I would be starting a treatment program at an eating disorder center. The second was that Katie was a physician assistant. 

During my fourteen weeks of eating disorder treatment, I made it my goal to recover from anorexia nervosa so that I could attend the Miami University in the fall and work to become a physician assistant. It was the most difficult experience of my life, however, it was also the most important. I learned that if I truly wanted something, I must give my maximum effort and never stop fighting. Now that I have been recovered for two years, I refer to myself as a fighter. Some days it is hard to ignore the negative thoughts that invade my mind regarding eating, but I do not listen to them. I will not let them come in the way of my dreams and passion of pursuing medicine. Not only do I fight for my own health, but I am ready to fight for the health of my patients. The compassion, dedication, and perseverance that I have gained from my life experiences have helped me to grow into the person that I am today. 

My life experiences also exemplify that I continue to grow, learn, and gain responsibility. Having the ability to work with a medical team, yet work independently, are major reasons that I am pursuing a career as a physician assistant. By working in the medical field, I will be able to continue to make an impact in others’ lives and enjoy coming to work each day. As a student in a physician assistant graduate program, I am confident that I will be able to pursue my dream of helping and providing care to others.

 

[Glorious_Ignoramus]

Paragraphs!!  Break it up into paragraphs first, then I can take a look at it.

[paba]

     When I was younger, I always imagined myself having a summer job making ice cream sundaes with rainbow sprinkles or learning to tread water in order to save children from the dangers of the community pool. Although I never served ice cream sundaes or had the chance to save a drowning child during my summers spent at home during college, I gained more than fifteen grandparents. This was not what I expected to happen when I accepted the position as a resident assistant at Hill Assisted Living. When I was hired, my manager explained that I would be assisting elderly residents with grooming, feeding, bathing, and many more activities of daily living. I was completely unaware when I was hired of the lasting impact that the residents would have on my desire to pursue medicine.

   

     Working at Hill during my undergraduate career taught me a lot about the health care field and ignited my passion to help others. The work environment truly helped me grow in areas of reliability, professionalism, working with others, maturity, and adaptability. Also, working with the residents instilled in me the need to be caring, enthusiastic, and dependable and to sharpen my critical thinking skills. I still remember each one of the resident’s daily routines such as bed times, favorite outfits, what time of day they liked their showers, etc. Others provided a challenge to me which I feel that I dealt with compassionately and professionally. I will never forget when I broke through to one particularly stubborn patient by taking the extra time to sit with her and talk about how she used to make blueberry pies from scratch. From that day on, I felt that I had her trust which made caring for her much more efficient and holistic. Without this experience, I would not have developed the passion for the healthcare field and the desire to help others that I now encompass. I also learned a lot about myself through this experience. I gained new coping skills to efficiently cope with stress when caring for my residents pushed me to my limits and discovered that, while I enjoyed the autonomy that my job provided me when caring for residents, I thrived most when I had a supervisor to ask questions and bring concerns to in order to provide my senior residents with the most dignified and exceptional care possible. This realization has reaffirmed my desire to become a physician assistant. With the opportunity to work closely yet autonomously with a doctor, I am confident in my abilities to succeed in the physician assistant profession.

 

     In addition to caring for patients at the assisted living home, I have been a patient as well. As long as I can remember, I was always excited to get to go to the doctor’s office. Even if I was visiting my pediatrician for something as miserable as strep throat, the blood pressure cuffs, scales, and doctors all sparked a sense of curiosity in my young mind that has grown enormously since childhood. However, around the time I turned seventeen, I no longer felt a sense of awe walking into the doctor’s office. Instead, I felt dread. I did not want the doctor to weigh me. I knew when I stepped on the scale that she would notice my weight had dropped drastically. Logically, I knew I had lost weight, but I was terrified of gaining any of it back. After dodging the questions about my sudden weight loss for about a year, I was pulled out of The Ohio State University right after fall semester of my freshman year was finished and diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. I was sent to the hospital and spent a week listening to doctors talking about ECGs, bradycardia, and orthostatic hypotension. Having only began my college career, these words all went over my head and no doctor seemed to have the time to explain what they meant to me. It was not until a woman named Katie stopped by my room to see how I was doing that I learned the terminology. We ended up talking for over an hour and by the end of our conversation, I learned two very important things. The first was that I would be starting a treatment program at an eating disorder center. The second was that Katie was a physician assistant.

 

     During my fourteen weeks of eating disorder treatment, I made it my goal to recover from anorexia nervosa so that I could attend the Miami University in the fall and work to become a physician assistant. It was the most difficult experience of my life, however, it was also the most important. I learned that if I truly wanted something, I must give my maximum effort and never stop fighting. Now that I have been recovered for two years, I refer to myself as a fighter. Some days it is hard to ignore the negative thoughts that invade my mind regarding eating, but I do not listen to them. I will not let them come in the way of my dreams and passion of pursuing medicine. Not only do I fight for my own health, but I am ready to fight for the health of my patients. The compassion, dedication, and perseverance that I have gained from my life experiences have helped me to grow into the person that I am today.
My life experiences also exemplify that I continue to grow, learn, and gain responsibility. Having the ability to work with a medical team, yet practice independently, are major reasons that I am pursuing a career as a physician assistant. By working in the medical field, I will be able to continue to make an impact in others’ lives and enjoy coming to work each day. As a student in a physician assistant graduate program, I am confident that I will be able to pursue my dream of helping and providing care to others.

 

 

 

 

Here is the same draft broken up into paragraphs! Thanks for lookin at it @Glorious_Ignoramus 

[UGoLong]

Did you have any clinical experience besides as the resident director? I get a good sense of your motivation, experience as a resident director, and life as a patient meeting a PA. I don't get a good handle as to your experience/ability to care for patients. any other hands-on stuff to be mentioned?

[paba]

Did you have any clinical experience besides as the resident director? I get a good sense of your motivation, experience as a resident director, and life as a patient meeting a PA. I don't get a good handle as to your experience/ability to care for patients. any other hands-on stuff to be mentioned?

I am also involved in a program where I visit a patient weekly in his home and I monitor his sugars, nutrition, aches and pains and other things related to improve his quality of life. Then I report to a team of doctors and pharmacists and they give me ideas to tell him.

[paba]

Did you have any clinical experience besides as the resident director? I get a good sense of your motivation, experience as a resident director, and life as a patient meeting a PA. I don't get a good handle as to your experience/ability to care for patients. any other hands-on stuff to be mentioned?

However, being a resident assistant, I do a lot of care for the patients including bathing, grooming, feeding, changing foley bags and colostomy bags, cleaning small wounds, etc. Basically the work of an STNA

[FuturePA25]

Hello, 

 

Overall your personal statement seems fine, just some minor tweaking necessary. 

In the sentence "I gained new coping skills to efficiently cope with stress...", I would suggest using a different word instead of 'cope with', maybe you can write 'manage' or 'handle'. Not that big of a deal, but it just sounds a bit repetitive writing cope twice. 

At the end of your third paragraph when you end with Kate being a physician assistant, I think it would be nice if you added a sentence or two about the job as a physician assistant itself, for example: what was it about Kate being a PA  that made you further interested in becoming a PA yourself? 

I know that will add even more characters to your essay, which is what you're trying to avoid. The only thing I could think of cutting down is the amount of detail you mention in the two paragraphs in which you talk about your eating disorder. Maybe remove the sentence "Some days it is hard to ignore the negative thoughts .... I will not let them come in the way..." If you take this sentence out, the paragraph actually flows very nicely throughout.

 

I apologize for my wordy response, but anything to help! Also, congratulations on successfully overcoming your eating disorder, it proves that you were able to overcome a difficult period in your life through hard work, and I am sure an admissions officer reading this will certainly appreciate your strong-willed personality.