Need help with question - news story that will shape my future

Hey guys. I need to answer this question in less than 150 words for admission to Honors. Here is the question:

"Choose a recent community, national or international news story and explain how the story will shape your future."

I need help with ideas. I really cant think of any stories right now, I'm having a horrible writer's block. I want to study medicine so I was thinking about finding news on that but couldn't find any. I live in South Florida in case it maatters. THANKS

Seek, and ye shall find. Go forth into the vast digital wilderness that is the Internet, therefore, and seek ye news stories wherever they do grow, whether in the deserts of newspaper triteness, or upon the vast, jumbled plains of television news station websites, or even among the crags of the mountains of medical journals. And, should none of these suit with ye, pray to the Great Overmind, Google, asking it to send ye stories related to the search string "medical news stories."

You may also find something interesting searching around this site: scitechdaily.com

Good luck.

The biggest and easy story I can think of is the economic crises we are in right now. You have so many options and angles to talk about.

+ How will this deep recession effect you getting job when you graduate from college?

+ Will money for medical school be available to you? How will this effect you decision to go to medical school?

+ Obama talked about the heavy financial burden that new doctors face after graduation from medical school. How would this effect you as a new doctor?

+ What are you going to do as a Doctor about people who can't pay you due to lack of insurance

If you want to study medicine, the obvious choice is health care reform.

Thank you all for the suggestions! All of you brought up some really great points. I visited that website you gave me Sean and found a really interesting article that I wrote about. I would also like to thank Rolandj727 and Simone for bringing up some really insightful topics to write about. However I had already finished my paragraph when I saw your posts. Anyways, here is what I came up with last night:

"I came across an article a few days ago highlighting a recent breakthrough in science. The article was titled "Israeli scientists show bacteria can plan ahead" and was published on June 17, 2009 on esciencenews.com. It described the new research conducted by Weizmann Institute of Science where they discovered that bacteria are able to foresee any future event and prepare for it. A professor at Tel Aviv University and two doctoral students examined microorganisms that lived in environments that changed in predictable ways. They discovered that the microorganisms were able to anticipate what comes next in a sequence of events and then change their state of affairs accordingly. I feel that these findings in science open the doors for many young and aspiring doctors who wish to pursue a career in medicine. It shows the potential that one has to research and learn new things."

Waht do you think?

I read that story -- it is very interesting. What does it have to do with your future, though? Do you want to do research on bacteria? To what end? Do you see a way to build on the research to create medical breakthroughs? At the moment, your essay does not address the prompt. Either refine it to do so, or choose a different story.

Yeah you're right. I read my prompt over and I didn't really say what it has on my future. I am not sure yet if I want to become a doctor or a pharmacist. Pharmacy usually involved studying bacteria and chemicals which is why I chose the story. Do you have any ideas on what I can change to address the prompt? Im not very good with writing short prompts as I tend to babble on and its hard for me to get to the point.

Well, decide whether you want to be a doctor or a pharmacist from the point of view of this essay, bearing in mind that your decision will be entirely non-binding. For instance, you could talk about how a pharmacist, or perhaps a medical researcher creating the drugs pharmacists sell, might be able to design better medications knowing that bacteria have expectations that can be manipulated. You might then talk about how you wish to be such a researcher, which would bring you back to the prompt quite nicely.

But the focus of the prompt is a news story that will shape your life. As fascinating as that finding is, it's not likely to shape the lives of anyone other than those specifically interested in related research questions. I say start over with a news story sure to shape your life in some way. It could be something national (like health care reform), international (like the financial crisis) or local (like a big change in your home town).

What specific field of medicine are you interested in? I'm also a premedical student. If you like to read science & medical news, you should check out sciencedaily.com. I found a recent medical news posted on the NY Times particularly interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/science/06face.html. This story shows the potentials of medicine in helping others, even as extreme as face transplantation.

Of course, if CarlosGarcia19 is the sort of person who is specifically interested in related research questions, then he's golden. Otherwise, I acknowledge that your advice is absolutely correct.