I was lucky enough to find the love of my life at a very young age. Specifically, four years old; it was then that I took my first dance class.  I recall being ecstatic and energized each week to go to ballet class and at the end of the year I could not wait to go on stage and perform in my first recital, Toy Story. My class was featured as building block toys, each little girl wearing tiny little yellow tutus with gold sequins and ruffles on the skirt adorned with embroidered numbers on the bodice.  This dance class built the foundation for the building block tower of who I would grow into over the next 13 years. At age four, I had no idea how vital dance would be in shaping me into the person that I am today. As I’ve grown, we do less galloping with ribbons and many more pirouettes and jumps, but through dance, I have accumulated a repertoire of life skills and lessons indispensable to who I am. It is through dance that I developed my work ethic.  I learned the importance of hard work, both inside and outside the studio, and over time, those habits carried over into my academic and everyday life.  As a result, I became skilled at motivating myself to stay disciplined and put in the effort needed to succeed.  Even now, at seventeen, I continue to work hard at dance because, in dance, perfection does not exist.  Perfection never exists. As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, this has been a hard truth to accept.  However, this does not deter me from putting in high-quality effort; instead, it inspires me to work harder in  all aspects of my life due to the knowledge that there is always room for improvement.  To achieve this growth, one must often step outside their comfort zone.  A significant portion of the progress I have made would not have been possible had I not been willing to diverge from what was familiar. For example, in my junior year, I began a health science course at Oakland Schools Technical Campus Southwest, a program designed to provide early exposure to healthcare careers.  Though I was confident in my interest in health science, I was hesitant to enroll because it would entail a departure from the typical core high school curriculum.  However, throughout the past year, this course has only further solidified my ambition to pursue a career in medicine.  Though I may have found a new love in my life, my first love, dance, will always be a foundational part of who I am.  Aside from life lessons and profound realizations, dance has been my rock, my love, and my home over the past thirteen years.  There is some extraordinary reaction that occurs in my brain when I dance that fills my lungs with a breath of new life and injects pure joy into my soul. Dance will always hold a special place in my heart, it made me who I am.  Yes, that may be a cliche statement, however it is true.  For the past 13 years dance has allowed me to build the building block tower of who I have become.  Each experience it gave me added a block onto the top of the tower until it became the steeple that it is today.  Even though I will eventually end my formal dance career, I will always continue to add to the building block tower and I will forever be grateful for the contributions dance has made to my life.

My personal motivation in pursuing a career in medicine encompasses my love and passion for human biology, as well as my desire to help people and the joy I get from doing so. I have, for as long as I can remember, been fascinated by the inner workings and complexities of the human body, and I have continually found myself pushing to learn more about it in every way possible. Fireworks ignite in my brain whenever I am learning about the anatomy and physiology of the human body which only increases my desire to study the topic. This intrigue is ultimately what showed me that I was meant to become a physician. My passion lies most prominently in understanding the intricacies of the female body, specifically the female reproductive system, and using that knowledge to provide high-quality care to women. It is this passion that has inspired me to use this knowledge to eventually open a women’s health center, the goal of which would be to provide all women with the safe, accessible, and affordable, high-quality healthcare that they need. These goals, that of pursuing a career in medicine and opening a women's health center have formed over a long period of self-discovery and self-reflection. Reflecting back on my life, it is safe to say that I have always been a feminist. This part of me has taken many forms throughout my seventeen years of life. When I was around five years of age, for example, I would probably have used the term “girl power” rather than feminism, however, one concept has remained a constant belief of mine through those years. Women and men are equal and they deserve equal treatment in every aspect of society. As I have grown and, and in turn, become more aware of the disparities between women and men existing in society, I have realized that, unfortunately, healthcare is one aspect of society in which women and men, oftentimes, do not receive the same care. I aspire to help to close this gap and to provide women with the best possible care that I am capable of. Both my dedication to improving care for women and the joy that ignites inside me while learning about the body have energized me about the prospect of becoming a physician.