Edit and shorten this given essay for medical school.
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While growing up, my parents made sure my younger brother and I followed our Gujarati culture and Hindu religion, even driving us hours to a temple in Houston. We mostly spoke Gujarati in the house, especially because my mom spoke little else.
My parents moved to the tight-knit community of Nacogdoches, Texas a few months after my 2nd birthday, where my father bought a local convenience store. We moved into a small home across the street. Albeit a nice place to grow up this is the place where I was first introduced to racism and bullying. This was also the place, which led me to grow as a person, resilient to the social and communal pressures that are inflicted upon many of us from different background or origin.
In Nacogdoches, a fairly small town of 33,000, many of my peers had never interacted with non-US cultures before. 58% of Nacogdoches residents classify themselves as white while only 1% are Asian. I remember walking through the hall to my locker and feeling someone's hand pushing against my back, the next thing I knew I was on the floor. The candy bars I was carrying were on sprawled out on the tile floor. I was selling the bars to raise money to go on an exchange trip to Japan when a few guys thought it would be funny to push me over. While I was trying to gather all the bars, students around me began stealing them. When I got home I realized I was 20 bars short and had to pay out of pocket for them. After this incident I was continuously harassed for being different, I would go home and cry every day.
My teachers began to notice me exclude myself from group activities to avoid being taunted. I was able to seek advice from my history teacher who suggested I prepare presentation over Indian culture and religion to share with my class. I was able to make a presentation with food and activities to help my classmates to better understand my background.
Slowly, the racism started to die down, year-by-year, grade-by-grade, as my peers started to mature, but my life was still more difficult and stressful than many girls my age at the time. I was responsible for not only my schoolwork but also my younger brother. Since my parents were not familiar with many aspects of American schooling, it was all up to me, from what classes I needed to take in high school to have a rigorous application for college to managing my loans for my college tuition. As I attempted to handle all my schoolwork, I was constantly afraid of making the wrong decision and ruining everything I had worked for, this led me to be extremely stressed.
That summer my mother took me to New Jersey just like we every other summer. My favorite part of going to New Jersey was learning classical Bharatanatyam dancing. The choreography required patience, self-control, and grace. I realized that dancing calmed me down and helped me think clearly. It helped my stress so I was able to easily make important decisions and face challenges fearlessly. Dance became my medicine to the stress.
My experiences of racism and prejudice have given me the gift to be able to help my patients understand their value and give them the confidence to seek the equal quality care. It has given me power to be more committed to helping social determinants of health. Having lived the experience, I can teach others ways to cope with the psychological trauma of bullying and having heavy responsibilities and stress.