Personal statement

On paper, a middling medical prospect.
In the hungry years before, "low motivation for medicine"
kept trickling down from the bench, and stern arbiters
wondered at atypical activities
and sneered at passions haltingly expressed.

I do not fit the mold. And did not want to.

The tenor dreams of medicine. The actor yearns
for another role. The poet throws his script aside.

And all the paperwork minutae, all the flaming loops of arguement
do not encompass an answer to the question.

"Why do you want to become a doctor?"

Because.

Sometimes I feel like a child, perilously close to tantrum.

Because.

So completely inadequate for that harried and cynical admissions apparatchik.

Because.

But so completely right it needs no other explanation.

Because.



I try anyway, "I want to help people?"

Because?

All I know, with unshakeable certainty, is that
my inexpert floundering, my dull, prosaic babbling
is an attempt to communicate burning desire.

Because.

And beyond desire, there lives an undeniable certainty,
a knowledge beyond logic that this is my place.

I cannot tell you why. I cannot explain.

Because