Motivation to Seek a Career in Medicine Personal Statement

Motivation to Seek a Career in Medicine Personal Statement\

Career Documents Two of the most important documents you may ever write in your career are a Curriculum Vitae (CV) and applications to graduate programs and jobs. The details included in these documents will change as your list of skills and accomplishments grows and should always be customized to the audience you send them to. CVs are almost the same thing as a resume. Resumes tend to be shorter, often only one page long. Your CV might only be 1-2 pages long at this point in your career; however, it will be much longer when you have many presentations, publications, and successful grant applications to list. See the course page about CVs for tips and examples.

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The details and format of graduate school and job applications will vary depending on the institution and specifics of the program or job. However, you should always expect to submit a writing sample that will be used to evaluate your ability to communicate clearly in writing. The application may require that you provide a personal statement of interest. If a specific prompt is included, customize your statement to the prompt. Examples of prompts: • Medical school: Explain your motivation to seek a career in MEDICINE. Be sure to include the value of your experiences that prepare you to be a physician. If a personal statement is not requested in the application, you will still need to write a letter of application to accompany your application to the program or job. Format the letter as a formal business letter. o Page 1 of your file should include either the prompt you are responding from the graduate program or the posted personnel ad for the job you chose as a prompt. ▪ Don’t leave this out – peer reviewers and graders need it in order to determine how well you have customized your application documents. ▪ Insert a page break so that your letter or statement begins on a new page. o Page 2 is the first page of your letter of application or intent or your statement of interest. If you are submitting a letter, it should be formatted as a formal business letter which includes a heading. ▪ Your letter may be up to 2 pages long. ▪ Insert a page break at the end of your letter or statement so that your CV begins on a new page. o Page 3 or 4 (which ever one immediately follows your letter of application or intent) is the first page of your personal CV. While most of you will not use more than 2 pages for your CV, some of you may have a longer list of relevant skills/experiences or work history which will require additional page

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Motivation to Seek a Career in Medicine Personal Statement