So you want to be a doctor. That means you want to dedicate yourself to years of advanced training and exhausting days of studying, followed by intensive hours of on-the-job experience. You’ll use more knowledge in one day than most of your friends needed for four years of college. The decisions you make will affect life and death, literally. It will be a long time before you have days off.

If what you know about being a doctor is defined by television and movies, you may want to think again. Difficult cases are not solved in sixty minutes (minus time for commercials). Most doctors are not, in fact, miracle workers. But if you’ve considered all this and if you are determined, you may become a very fine physician.

Virtually all the essays collected for this book were written by people who want to be doctors. Amidst the goals and descriptions of themselves, the authors chosen for this section seem to focus more on that message, but they don’t all do it the same way. The admissions committee readers may be recent med school graduates, or even med students, and they’ll be looking for evidence of your sincere enthusiasm for the profession. The more experienced faculty members on the committee will be moved if you can remind them of the excitement they felt as applicants or new doctors.

The first essayist, David E. Winchester, focuses on his volunteer activities, but he brings it nicely into synch with his desire to practice medicine. (CLICK HERE FOR DAVID WINCHESTER’S ESSAY.) William Parker and Kristin Siegrist are very straightforward in their approach. They both claim in their opening lines that they have always wanted to be doctors. William was so certain that he applied for an Early Assurance Program, thereby committing himself to medical school much earlier than the usual applicant. Both of them support their claim with essays that trace the history of their deep-seated desire to be a doctor.

Glen Davis writes one of the best essays in this collection, both in content and composition. He uses Robert Frost (acknowledged in his opening words) and Henry David Thoreau (unacknowledged in his closing words) to trace the “itinerary” he took, both literally and figuratively, on his journey to medical school.

Using his passionate desire to return to his rural hometown and serve as a doctor there, the next writer creates an effective piece. Admissions committees are bound to take note of his ambition, and rural areas are notoriously underserved by committed physicians.

Finally, Eric Gordon never actually makes the statement, but he uses his essay to trace, with vivid attention to detail, the experiences that aroused in him the “passion” for medicine—which ultimately became a “calling.”

The “I Want to Be a Doctor” approach is the most honest you can use, but it also has a lot of potential pitfalls. Be sure that you don’t reduce your life’s goal to a collection of clichés, stale sentiments, and arrogant statements about how you’re going to save the world. Instead, focus on specific events that made you realize that practicing medicine is how you want to spend your life.

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