Mathew Griffin
Brown University
My reasons for wanting to be a doctor are very similar to why most people choose their career path: I want to make things fairer. People such as social workers are out to help make the world a little less unjust. It’s not necessarily injustice from other people that I want to fight as these people do, but injustice from other factors. Many people who are close to me have been struck down from their future in ways that it’s impossible for them to recover. My aunt was a great artist and loving mother before she developed severe schizophrenia. She now locks herself in her house for weeks at a time and remains isolated from her family. My friend Eric, who was once in his school’s varsity basketball league, cannot play his senior season because a car accident left him nearly paralyzed. Finally, my friend Vince’s depression has stripped him of his will to live, and despite attempts of over a dozen psychiatrists and medications, he still spends most of his days aimlessly lying in bed. While I try very hard to cheer him up by talking to and entertaining him, I am deeply concerned about his future. This trend is something that I’m seeing almost everywhere. More and more people are becoming depressed and hopeless, and I want to be able to put life and happiness back into them.
Not only do I see these injustices in my life, when I’m volunteering at my local hospital, my desire to help become even more emboldened by the people I meet. A new grandmother I met recently had her spine shattered when she fell from a ladder back onto a table. As I talked to her, I remembered how many times I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother lifting me and my cousins and caring for us, and became overcome with emotion. While I don’t believe her ability to care for her grandchildren will be destroyed, I know that she won’t have the same opportunities as other grandparents, and the inequality of the situation makes me extremely upset. I want nothing more than to give back her ability to walk and lift her grandkids. I believe being a doctor can allow me to bring this closer.