Navigating Trauma in Your Personal Statement for Medical School

Written by Britt D.K. Gratreak 

Published by In-Training

I applied to medical school twice. In retrospect, I was unsuccessful the first time for a few reasons: my timing was terrible, I had too much humility about my achievements, and I didn’t ask for enough opinions about my application from people who were rooting for me. My trauma was also too raw and recent to write in a way for strangers to understand.

After taking a few years to focus on research, I applied a second time. I didn’t take additional classes, so my GPA hadn’t changed, and my MCAT was about to expire. However, the second application felt completely different since my first application. The lawsuit with my trauma at its epicenter was finally settled. Traumatic night terrors were no longer a simple letter or phone call away from being sparked. I also had a much better support system of friends, mentors and a loving partner. I reached a point of moderate closure, and although the long-term health consequences never went away, my life was simply more comfortable.

Instead of marathon-writing for my application in the evenings after work like I had during my first attempt, I accrued vacation days to strategically take a week off. I sometimes spent an entire day simply reflecting on what I wanted to write. I gently coaxed out streams of consciousness without interruption and soon had a draft. When I asked my partner to scan it for flow and typos, I got a response that I didn’t expect: “Wow, I didn’t know you went through all of that at once. You are a total badass!”

I appreciated the sentiment, but the mystified tone caught me off guard…

Read the full story here -> https://in-training.org/navigating-trauma-in-your-personal-statement-for-medical-school-19973

Image credit: journals (CC BY-NC 2.0) by Ganamex