David E. Winchester (back to contents)

As I pulled on the brass door handle and slowly opened the massive wooden door, I motioned for Alex to go on inside. His face lit up with amazement. “Do those guitars and costumes really belong to KISS?” I told him yes and he ran over to gaze at the glass case that enclosed a full drum set, costumes, guitars and other memorabilia. Then the questions really started to pour from his head. ‘How did they get this stuff?’, ‘What else do they have?’, ‘Can I go look around?’ As Alex wandered around the restaurant I sat at our table and reflected. I realized that while I have visited the Hard Rock Cafe many times, this was the first time Alex had been. It was thrilling to see him so overwhelmed at the experience. I thought to myself, this is why I volunteered to be a Big Brother, this is the kind of moment that I hoped would come from this experience. The joy of giving, especially because I gave him something that he could not have on his own.

That kind of satisfaction is one of the reasons that I want to be a doctor. It seems to me that being a doctor is one of the best ways to have that feeling in my life every day. It is that kind of feeling which reminds me of what it felt like doing rounds with my father in Tallahassee. I remember the way his patients would glow as we entered the room. He would introduce me and then they would chat for a while. The whole time we were with a patient, it was fascinating to see the way that they trusted him implicitly. They often fawned over us with their eyes as if to say ‘I’m so happy to have you here.’ It made them happy to have someone to put faith in. The entire experience was comforting.

I know that being excited about working with people and being able to bring them joy is not the only skill I will need to make a good doctor. Another personal quality of mine that I will use as a physician is my desire to continually learn. I am committed to using nearly every moment I have to learn. For example, one of the ways that I like to escape from schoolwork and other assignments is to read. Some of my favorite books include autobiographies of CDC epidemiologists and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. I read a lot of journals and newspapers as well. I have also been teaching myself how to design Web sites and play the guitar.

As another way of learning, I try to make medicine part of my studies. The class I am enrolled in this summer has given me the opportunity to use Sociology to study medicine. The major project in the class is to construct a survey to measure people’s attitudes about a topic. My paper discusses how people’s perception of their health changes with respect to their age, income, attitude about socialized medicine and other variables.

Volunteerism is a quality that will be important as a doctor. I may have not had a lot of patient interaction and clinical experience, but that is not because I do not want to practice medicine. I was committed to other student groups before I learned about any decent opportunities to participate in clinical activities. I decided to stick with these activities because they not only benefited other students, but I learned a lot from them as well. I feel that my commitment to helping others and volunteerism is more important than where I chose to volunteer my time and energy.

My quality most beneficial to my future as a physician is my deep desire to practice medicine. In writing this statement, one of the exercises I performed to prepare was to brainstorm 25 reasons why I want to by a doctor. Some of the ones that stand out to me are, ‘to make a difference’, ‘to be a leader’, and ‘to help people’. In my estimation though, there is something even more important to notice than what the answers on my list were, and that is how easily they came. Once I started, the reasons just kept coming. In fact, I started the list with the goal of fifteen and I extended it because I was having so much fun daydreaming about being a doctor.

Daydreaming about being a doctor is not that new to me. Early in college, a friend and I were so captivated by medicine that sometimes, after class, we would go down to the Shands Teaching Hospital at UF and give ourselves a tour of the OR. We would borrow scrubs from the locker room and go down the hall looking in the rooms trying to determine what the surgeons were busy doing.

When you add all of this up what do you get? Take the satisfaction of bringing hope and joy to people, add a commitment to learning, throw in an unquenchable desire to practice medicine and you come up with me. I know that medical school is difficult but I welcome the challenge. After all, the benefits far outweigh the costs. It will be worth the hardships to hear from a patient the same sentiment that Alex leaves me with every week, “Thanks, Dave. I had a really great time today.”

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