For the Greater Good by Alex

For the Greater Good by Alex - December 2015 Scholarship Essay

It’s nearing the winter holidays again, but that familiar frigid air isn’t present in Zimbabwe, where I am working with Doctors Without Borders to treat citizens for HIV. I take a moment to reflect upon my journey up to this point. After all, I’m not your regular high school graduate of some small suburb in Pennsylvania. When I was nearing completion of secondary school, I found myself lost, thinking about how insane it was to force teenagers into making decisions regarding their college majors that would affect the rest of their lives. Many nights I had trouble because the date was nearing, and a whole slough of decisions needed to be made, and soon too.
I’ve always known that I wanted to help people with whatever talent I had been blessed. Up until close to the end of my high school career, I never realized that my interests in biology, chemistry, and other life sciences were staring me in the face! Prior to this realization, the only talent I thought I had was my masterful violin playing, something I loved doing since the tender age of four years old. Although I loved playing musical instruments, I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. Near the middle of my junior year of high school, however, in an engaging chemistry lab, I thought, “Wow. This is something I wouldn’t mind doing for the rest of my life.” After that point, I worked hard at searching for colleges for who had the best biomedical programs, and which I could realistically be admitted to.
Before searching for colleges, I never thought of money as much of an issue. But then, I saw the outrageous tuition rates of many private colleges! I contemplated how a college could justify charging a student fifty thousand dollars per year for a seat in some classes! Searching through financial aid pages, I knew that I wouldn’t qualify for any need-based grants or scholarships. My family was about as middle-class as it gets. Both of my parents work at decent-paying jobs, but they might-as-well declare bankruptcy before shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to allow me a good education.
I realized that scholarships, whether merit-based or private were the only way to make it through without carrying the weight of student debt with me for the next two decades of my life. And then I began signing up, almost compulsively, for scholarships.
With the higher education I earned at college, a new realm of possibilities opened up for me. Leaving college, I immediately got a job paying enough to put me through medical school, without having to pay off any debts from my college career. About a year out of medical school, I made the decision to join Doctors Without Borders. I realized that I could very well be helping people in the United States, but there are other places in the world where I could be of better help. This was my dream come true, of sorts. I earned the possibility to have a life changing experience; not only for myself, but also for every patient I treated, for every extra day that patient got to spend with their families. My capabilities required that I do something for the greater good, and I’m so glad I got the chance to help so many people.