Why I love biology by Rachel

Why I love biology by Rachel - May 2023 Scholarship Essay

I have always believed that my reason for being put on this planet is to help others. Since childhood, I have done everything in my power to assist my family, friends, peers, and teachers in order to make their daily lives more pleasant. To this end, my drive and passion for helping people has led me to want to study medicine. To make the world a safer place and enhance human life is something that I can say would give me true fulfillment however, I would be lying if I said this was my only reason for wanting to study medicine.I am a woman on a mission. During my freshman year biology class my teacher made the mistake of telling us that we were not allowed to call the mitochondria “the powerhouse of the cell” as we were previously taught, and from that point onward, I made it my life goal to prove her wrong. After that point I took class after class, desperate to prove I was worthy to call that single organelle by its nickname but alas, my efforts were in vain.
However, through my desperate and failing attempts to prove my teacher wrong I developed a deep love for the subject. My school’s “genetics honors” course was the push I needed to stay engaged throughout my online covid-19 courses.
In order to make change, we have to look deep within ourselves, down to the basic code that makes us who we are. Some genetic diseases are considered to me “impossible” to cure. However, in the last 50 years alone, we have made leaps and bounds into discovering how our code can be positively edited in order to benefit society. Genetic editing and genome therapy is a vastly untapped world of medical knowledge. In the most basic sense, we are one of the most complex and unknown systems to mankind. By studying ourselves and the way our code functions, there is potential to serve a vast population of individuals who previously could not be. I wish to study medicine and molecular biology in order to better the medical world.