The essay is good. Your flow isn't as bad as you fear. There are a couple of places that need grammar revision and a couple more that could lose some redundant words. Here are a few thoughts:
I firmly believe in the powerful message of Ecclesiastes 3:1, which states, "There is an appointed time for everything and there is a time for every event under heaven".
The opening isn't the strongest. The quote feels plopped into the middle of the sentence instead of smoothly incorporated. Punctuation goes on the inside of the quotation marks in the US.
that stagnancy of knowledge
While your education was put on hiatus, your knowledge didn't really stagnate. You haven't spent your time in a coma. Your life experience is an important part of your current desire to become a nurse-don't discount it too much.
When I started college at 18
Spell out "eighteen."
over a four year period
over a four
- year period.
It wasn't until I found a job as a receptionist, at a private doctor's office where things started to change for me.
Most doctors' offices in the US are private. If it were a public/free clinic, I would specify, but the word
private feels extraneous.
Until is a word that refers to time. You don't need the comma. Change
where to
when to maintain continuity: It wasn't until I found a job as a receptionist at a doctor's office when things started to change for me.
interacting with healthcare professionals and patients.
I'd put
patients before
healthcare professionals. The way the sentence is written, it looks like
healthcare is modifying both
professionals and
patients.
My job was basic fairly basic administration
Whoa, Nelly, That's an awful lots of
basic. Just how basic was your position? The administration of Band-Aids? Nix the redundancy but also consider a revision. You don't want to demean your role as part of a medical office.
With no previous medical training before, I was curious to learn a new skill.
This isn't really working for me. The "no previous medical training" and the "curious to learn a new skill" aren't closely enough related in my mind. I could see you being anxious because of your lack of training, but not curious.
Curious can also have a negative connotation. It implies that you are wanting to know something that is not really your place to be asking. Saying that you were
eager (or any other number of synonyms without the negative connotation) would be better here.
interpreting labs and pathology reports
Make
labs singular here.
The doctors in the group granted me much more opportunities for hands-on care
many more opportunities
I assisted in a facial surgery removing a deep skin cancer from the mandible area.
Facial is not needed because you tell us later in the sentence that the cancer was in the mandible area.
The surgeon taught me how to do a running stitch on the patient, a skill, which would not have been normally taught if I had worked elsewhere else.
Wow. It seems that it would be illegal/unethical for you to stitch up a patient. Was this the same patient with the facial surgery? What about scarring? I don't know how things are normally done in the medical world, but this scenario leaves me with little respect for the physician. The second comma is not needed. I have no idea what the word
else is doing hanging out at the end of this sentence, but you need to send it packing.
get my degree in nursing.
There has to be a better way to say this.
Attending college at this point in my life has not been easy. I work for a small private doctor's office and often stay at work late at night to finish medical insurance paperwork and call patients to counsel them for surgeries the next day. Commuting every night to get to class after working 10 hours was taxing. However, the distance and time seems so tiny when I think of the wealth of information I am gaining in my classes.
The timeline of this paragraph doesn't make sense. You work, often staying late at night to call patients. Calling patients late at night? Do you ask them if their refrigerator is running? Then you leave work late at night to attend classes? In the middle of the night? Do most colleges have a graveyard shift?
I mentally prepared and persistent enough
I
am mentally prepared
There are a few other grammar mistakes, but I will wait for a revision or let other forum members have a go. There are a few people here who are experts at pointing out unneeded commas. I would hate to take away all of their fun.