First time applicant - advice needed (rough first draft)

[aliciac85]

Hello!  I am a first time PA school applicant and I am starting to work on my personal statement.  I'm not entirely confident of the direction of my PS and would love some advice!  Some background on me... I am a medical technologist that has been out of school for 7 years, and I have not had a lot of direct patient care being in the lab.  I shadowed a PA for one day (that is all my current work schedule would allow).  I don't have any exciting story to tell about a specific patient that made me realize I wanted to be a PA.  Is the direction that my first draft is going in a good one?  Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

 

 

See new draft in post below

[Glorious_Ignoramus]

I will be frank and earnest with you, please do not take this as personal criticism :)

 

Scrap this narrative.  You have a long lead into what could be condensed as "I want to be a PA because my friend is a PA."  When you write your new narrative, try not to start off with something like how you didn't know what you wanted to do when you were 17.  This is a given, not many people really do know at that age; the purpose of the narrative is to show an adcom that, now that you are no longer 17 you should know why you want to be PA, so why?

 

There has got to be something in your life which pushed you in this direction other than watching your friend.  If there truly is not, then you may want to think twice about applying, as there are many fields in and out of medicine wherein you can help great numbers of people.

 

You mentioned that interacting with patients in the oncology lab began to warm you up to medicine...this is the most interesting part of your narrative, can you build a story around this?  Is there a particular case or patient you can think of which made you think that you could better serve the particular instance by being a PA?

 

Also, when you say lab scientist, do you actually mean a PhD research scientist or a PI?

[aliciac85]

I will be frank and earnest with you, please do not take this as personal criticism :)

 

Scrap this narrative.  You have a long lead into what could be condensed as "I want to be a PA because my friend is a PA."  When you write your new narrative, try not to start off with something like how you didn't know what you wanted to do when you were 17.  This is a given, not many people really do know at that age; the purpose of the narrative is to show an adcom that, now that you are no longer 17 you should know why you want to be PA, so why?

 

There has got to be something in your life which pushed you in this direction other than watching your friend.  If there truly is not, then you may want to think twice about applying, as there are many fields in and out of medicine wherein you can help great numbers of people.

 

You mentioned that interacting with patients in the oncology lab began to warm you up to medicine...this is the most interesting part of your narrative, can you build a story around this?  Is there a particular case or patient you can think of which made you think that you could better serve the particular instance by being a PA?

 

Also, when you say lab scientist, do you actually mean a PhD research scientist or a PI?

 

Thanks.  That's what I needed to know - whether this was a good direction to go in or if it was boring.  I had a feeling it was boring which is why I posted.  My husband of course told me he liked the content of it, but a) he's my husband and b) he's never applied to PA school.

 

When I say lab scientist, I mean Medical Technologist - I work in a laboratory performing lab tests on patients (I have worked in a hospital lab, a fertility lab and now an oncology lab).

[aliciac85]

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[camha92]

good luck with the revisions. I'm on my fifth draft and i still feel that it can be improved. stay strong!