Chapter 14 Perfect Social Impact Phrases
"What has been the ONE most important volunteer work you have done and why was it meaningful?"
(UCLA)
An all-too-common theme in many medical school admissions essays is the applicants' desire to become a doctor so they can benefit society and help people. It's an admirable goal, but one that medical schools will view skeptically unless there's evidence in the applicants' background that they have acted on that desire. Secondary essays about social impact or volunteer experiences give you the opportunity to do just that. If you have not written about your volunteer clinical experiences in health-care settings elsewhere in your application, social impact essay questions can be a good place to include them. If you have described your clinical experiences, use the social impact topic to show the schools that medical contexts are not the only ones in which you've "given back."
My most profound experience of medicine's healing power was completely unplanned. I first met Campbell through a one-on-one social development program in which we met twice a week at the Downtown Athletic Club to run and lift weights. Although, unbeknownst to me, Campbell had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, he seemed no different from anyone else: he sweat from running, burned from lactic acid buildup, and tired from exertion. During the four months we worked together, our relationship grew beyond the confines of the gym. Campbell was an avid painter, and at exhibitions of his work he taught me the finer points of art. I still remember my first lesson. Campbell grabbed my hand, quickly introduced me to his parents, and proceeded to explain the interactions between the colors on every canvas. The thought that he might be a schizophrenic never crossed my mind until our last day together. Casually, in the locker room, Campbell told me that since working with me, he had needed to take less medication. The effect of this statement on me was profound. I had always seen Campbell as a friend I was happy to meet, not as a patient I was "treating." I realized then that the domain of healing is not limited to traditional medical treatments; it can be as simple as being a good friend.
When I was finishing my junior year at Baylor, I saw a flyer recruiting instructors to teach swimming and water therapy to developmentally and physically disabled people. My first thought was, "I couldn't possibly do that." But when I realized that my reaction stemmed from fears about and prejudices toward an unfamiliar group of people, I knew I had to apply. I quickly grew to love the place and the people. I still remember the first time Jamal, the center's autistic child with the worst behavior, responded to my therapy by swimming all his laps without splashing others or running out of the pool. Even the routine events—like helping cerebral palsy victims with their daily walks in the pool or chatting with them about their day—made me feel good. My initial fears turned into joy, and my prejudices dissolved into profound respect for these people who coped so bravely with challenges greater than most of us will ever face. In discovering how much I enjoyed working with people who have physical needs, I began to consider a career in medicine.
For the past four years, I have worked as an attendant helping handicapped students who need assistance with their daily routines. During the summers I have taught fifth- and sixth-grade science to students who lack adequate educational opportunities. While the impact of these achievements doesn't qualify me as Mother Theresa, I am proud of the positive differences I have made in others' lives. More than that, I am grateful for the life lessons I have learned from the people whose lives I have touched. From the first day I met Isabelle Kubichek, a disabled Dartmouth student, I could tell I was working with an amazing person, one who had discovered happiness in life despite the tremendous adversity she faced from cerebral palsy. Isabelle's smile and cheery laugh told me that she could easily find the silver lining in any difficult situation. In the four years I have worked with Isabelle, she has taught me to appreciate the simple things in life—that I have a roof to sleep under, food in the refrigerator, and loving friends and family. Without these essentials other things are inconsequential. If I perform poorly on an exam after putting in my best effort, there's no need to worry—there's always another chance to bounce back. I'm lucky. In fact, we're all lucky. "We just need to look at things from the right angle." That's what Isabelle always says.
One day in my junior year at Loyola University, Steve Boone, one of my best friends and a Choctaw Native American, made me aware that although the Native American population of Louisiana is 1 percent, there were only two Native Americans at Loyola. We talked with the admissions office and discovered that Loyola organized recruiting trips to Chicago and Los Angeles but didn't visit Louisiana's Native American reservations. A week later we started a campus chapter of the Native American Students Association to raise awareness of the culture of Louisiana's major tribes on campus. More than 50 students and faculty members eventually became actively involved. During Native American Week, we erected an authentic Tunica-Biloxi tribal lodge on campus, brought in Chitimacha dancers from St. Mary Parish, passed out Indian fry bread, and showed historical documentaries daily in the student commons. This not only attracted attention from Loyola's admissions office but from the local community as well. Local grade schools organized field trips to see our lodge and eat the fry bread, and hundreds of New Orleanians came to the Loyola campus to watch the Native American dancers perform.
Today, I see my work as an operating room assistant and as a youth counselor at the Samaritan Youth Shelter as two sides of the same coin. As a counselor I am a role model for disadvantaged youths. My responsibility is not only to get the chores done, but to ensure through my words, behavior, and example that the young people learn and grow. "Treatment" happens every moment of every day. But the shelter's youths are not the only ones growing; I am too. Sexual and drug abuse are difficult topics for young people to confront, but they must. And in helping them address them, I must also understand and honestly confront myself. You cannot tell a client that he has to do something unless you believe inside that he truly does have to do it. You cannot encourage him to share his true feelings if you secretly believe that it is not okay to tell people how you feel. You cannot teach young people to respect themselves if you don't respect yourself first.
During my sophomore year in college I began teaching first- to third-grade students every Sunday in my neighborhood church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Though officially my job was to give them bible lessons, I soon discovered that teaching involved more than delivering knowledge. Whether it was young Matthew's puzzled stare or Monica's distracted attention as she watched a fly buzzing on the classroom window, my students quickly informed me that I was simply not reaching them. So I decided to adopt a new approach: to learn as much as I could about each student no matter how busy I was outside class. I was going to connect! In the weeks that followed I made a point of talking to them after class, playing with them, knowing their favorite snacks and their favorite TV characters. Our communication began to improve tremendously, and Matthew and Monica soon began eagerly participating in class and sharing their feelings. Teaching made my lifelong but until-then inchoate desire to serve people—to help them—concrete. Over time, I decided to combine this new sense of purpose with my enjoyment of the sciences to become a doctor, so I could help people to even greater effect.
I felt more than saw Mary Lou Durham's gaze follow me across her hospital room, and I knew the moment of truth was at hand. She was a septuagenarian with both legs recently amputated above the knee, and I was a squeamish 13-year-old volunteer at Tulsa St. Anthony Medical Center's physical therapy department, one of the few patient areas accessible to someone my age. Should I look at her? What if she looked back? Should I even walk by her wheelchair? Perhaps I had made a mistake by asking to be here. I was assigned to assist the therapists, yet here I was failing my first test of compassion. Then—eye contact. To my surprise, Mrs. Durham greeted me with a smile and a simple request, "Tall feller, could you git me a glass of water, please?" I nervously hustled up to her wheelchair with the styrofoam cup, and as she reached out for it, with her free hand she gently held my arm. She understood. Eight years later, though I am 800 miles away from Mrs. Durham, the lesson in compassion of her simple gesture remains with me.
Sitting on my desk is a photo of Christopher, an adorable 10-year-old whose huge winning smile boasts his enjoyment of a day at the Albuquerque Zoo. I smile when I see it because I know it tells only half the story. Ten minutes after the photo was taken my little friend burst into tears, started shrieking at the top of his lungs, and vigorously tried to bite me. After college, I accepted a position as a teaching assistant at the Schwinn Developmental School, a private special education school in Albuquerque, where I work in a medically supervised classroom for autistic children with severe developmental delays. Not only are my students nonverbal and low functioning, but they also have intense behavioral problems. Christopher, the student I work with most intimately, throws tantrums during which he bites, hits, scratches, and head-butts the people around him. He arrived in our classroom after a four-month hospitalization. During that time, specialists utilized different drug treatments and behavior modification techniques to attempt to improve his condition. My role is to continue delivering the care outlined by the teacher and members of the medical case–management team with whom I meet weekly. Specifically, I run different work stations, design new activities, collect data on Christopher's behaviors and academic performance, and restrain him when necessary according to a protocol approved by an ethics committee. For nine months, I have been with Christopher from the moment his bus arrives until I strap him in for the ride home. The job continues to test my abilities on a variety of levels, but most importantly, it has challenged my understanding of the physician's role by placing me in a situation where I can never hope to completely remedy Christopher's autism. In working with him, I have to accept even the smallest successes in improving his quality of life as major milestones. Everyone hopes that drug and behavioral therapy will give Christopher greater independence and allow him to experience things we take for granted, such as sitting through a movie or spending a day at the zoo. Nevertheless, the reality is that Christopher's current treatment may at best only delay his move into a full-time residential care facility once his parents can no longer physically handle his violent outbursts. With that in mind, what has my work done for Christopher? As an idealistic college graduate who thought I had all the answers, I was forced to deal with this question, just as Christopher's parents had to deal with it years ago. Although the parents and teachers with whom I work constantly give me reassurance about the quality and value of my efforts, it has taken me a long time to accept the idea that successful healing does not necessarily lead to a cure.
Volunteering on two mission trips near Torreón, a Mexican city eight hours from the U.S. border, fortified my determination to become a physician. Seeing firsthand the impoverished citizens living by the barest means—barren country farms, just enough running water and food to survive—put my own disappointments into perspective. As we distributed used clothing, basic medicine, and food to the people of La Partida, I noticed how small acts of charity, hand signals, smiles, and laughter overcame the language barrier. Each time we entered a village, the church bells would ring out to signal our arrival. The gratitude these hard-working, religious people showed me was moving and inspiring. I was surprised to find that helping people who really needed it could have as powerful an impact on me as it did on them.
In 1995 I volunteered for Yount Labs' Blood Borne Pathogen response team, which is responsible for cleaning up bodily fluid spills caused by accidents or injuries. By interacting with patients experiencing health problems, I learned how to remain calm, be reassuring, and efficiently perform physical checks without disturbing the patient. Invigorated by the immediate feedback and gratitude our patients gave me, I began volunteering during my lunch hour to teach disadvantaged children how to play basketball through the Davenport Hoops Foundation. To free up the time for this lunchtime commitment, I would arrive at work early and stay late. On the last day of class, I wished my 12 young students luck and told them I'd see them the next summer. One student, Brayden, came up to me and, while giving me a hug, told me that he didn't think he would see me next summer. His parents weren't sure, he said, that they could afford to send him, and he wanted to say goodbye just in case. I was deeply touched by Brayden's gratitude and emotion. I knew it was the kind of moment I would never experience in my chemistry career but would encounter often as a physician.
In 2004 I earned my paramedic patch and started teaching advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) and pediatric advanced life support (PALS) classes. The next year, I used my media production skills to build training materials for the Take a Shot for Health immunization program. Soon after, Medi-Redy Rescue asked me to join its team, which gave me even more opportunities to volunteer my time to teaching and participating in EMS. During the Hurricane Katrina devastation, my shock was punctuated by moments of pride as victims were rescued from the engulfed rooftops by fire fighters I had worked with in class just days before. The humbling satisfaction that comes from working with others to save lives is now something I can't live without.
I originally got involved in community service activities at Texas Tech to satisfy my parents' expectations. Cofounding Tech's Pet Fanciers Club, I recruited 78 members to sponsor dog and cat shows in the Lubbock area. And twice a month I tutored high school students in the inner city. Enjoying the way volunteer groups spawn friendships and a feeling of accomplishment, in my sophomore year I led six students in organizing events that raised $5,000 for The Safe Place, a nonprofit that provides shelter and support for runaway teens. By my junior year, I was volunteering to be a dorm advisor, even over my parents' protests that it would take too much time away from my studies. Creating a "social impact" theme on my floor of 30 residents, I organized more than six trips to food banks, elementary schools, and nursing homes. By my senior year the community life that had begun out of obedience to my parents had blossomed into an internship for U.S. Congressman Randy Neugebauer, for whom I handle social-work cases involving worker's comp, food stamps, and unemployment training.
To convince the dean that a new strategy was essential, I helped coordinate an electronic brainstorming session to which I invited former admissions officers, active alumni, former student admissions assistants, and professors who had reviewed applications for the admissions committee in the past. As the moderator, I got the group to identify the key challenges facing the graduate school's admissions process and to debate needed modifications. After the meeting, I summarized the group's observations, developed a new strategy for improving marketing reach and increasing yield, and vetted the summary with each of the participants. By creating an environment in which admissions challenges could be discussed in a nonthreatening and collaborative way, I was able to convince the dean to approve all six of my recommendations with only minor changes.
It was during the second month of my Peace Corps stint in Sironko, Uganda, that Fabayo, our office's maid and cook, mentioned that she was sending her eight-year-old son, Adofo, to work for a blacksmith. I tried to picture little Adofo engulfed in the heat and hazard of a blacksmith's shop and was appalled. Always struggling on their $400 annual income, Fabayo and her husband, a carpenter, had already pulled four of their children out of school so they could learn trades to support themselves. Now Adofo was to be the fifth. Since Fabayo and her husband's parents had done the same to them, they simply had no idea that staying in school might earn their children even better livelihoods as adults. Because the schools in Sironko could not teach the community's children for free and most poor families could not afford the tuition, I decided to organize free elementary education classes for kids like Adofo. First, I created an infrastructure—classrooms, teachers, books—by making strategic donations to locals in exchange for use of a makeshift classroom and the part-time teaching assistance of a nearby missionary organization. Three weeks after conceiving my plan, the Sironko school started class with seven children.
I'm particularly proud of the policy change I implemented last year in the Dover Free Clinic's treatment of strep throat. This disease can cause a sore throat in children, but more importantly it can also cause heart damage. Treating it effectively and quickly is critical. While the previous clinic policy, drug treatment, was effective, the drug's high cost meant we could rarely get enough donations from pharmaceutical companies to serve our population. I researched the medical literature and consulted with infectious disease specialists and local epidemiologists as well as the state public health department. Armed with my findings, I convinced the clinic to change the protocol from the expensive drug to a much cheaper but equally efficacious one that was available in generic form and that pharmaceutical companies were much happier to donate in larger quantities.