Is this paper okay?

Have you ever thought about how far our societies and our nation as a whole have come since the mid 1800’s? If you were a typical female living in 1835 and wanted to help people fight various diseases, well guess what, you couldn’t! Societies back then laughed at and looked down upon even the idea of female doctors. Luckily for us, there was; however, one woman who didn’t take no for an answer- 28 times! That courageous woman was Elizabeth Blackwell. I consider Elizabeth Blackwell my hero not because she was “famous” or had “killer moves” but because of her ability to overcome obstacle, her desire to make a change, her courage, her perseverance, and of course, her numerous achievements.


Today, many high school seniors choose their major, go off to college, receive a degree in a particular field, and their lives are set. Unfortunately, everything wasn’t as simple in the mid 1800’s. Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821 somewhere outside Bristol, England. She was the third to be born out of her family’s nine children. Even as a little girl, Elizabeth was very stubborn, brave, and sympathetic; while other girls her age were very humble. Fortunately for Elizabeth and her sisters, their father believed in women’s rights, which is why he made sure that his girls got the same education as their male siblings. It may seem as though Elizabeth’s life was pretty good, unfortunately, there were many hardships to come. In 1832, Elizabeth Blackwell and her family immigrated to the United States.


For a while, it appeared as though everything was back to normal: her father opened a sugar refinery business, she was still receiving private lessons from various tutors, and even her mother was happy. Less than six years after he immigrated to the United States, Samuel Blackwell died. The death turned out to be extremely hard on the Blackwell family. To make ends meet, Elizabeth along with her sisters and mother opened a private school for girls in their house. While teaching, Elizabeth was not very content because unlike the rest of her clan, she remembered why they came to the United State in the first place. Out of their whole clan of eleven, only Elizabeth and her father wanted to make an impact on the U.S. In the beginning, her father wanted to help abolish slavery, but since his death, Elizabeth felt like it was entirely up to her to bring their plan to life, but how? She didn’t have much time to figure out…


After teaching for a while with her family, Elizabeth understood that teaching wasn’t her calling and became determined to find out what was. Since Elizabeth was very sympathetic, she volunteered to take care of a dying family friend, Mary Donaldson. While taking care of Mary, Elizabeth figured out that she loved the feeling of being needed and helping other people; however, the things that really pushed Elizabeth into medicine were Mary’s words, “why can’t there be any female doctors?” At first, Elizabeth didn’t pay much mind to the remark, but as time passed, she started to figure out how she could make a difference. Finally, it came to her; she wanted to be the first woman doctor in the U.S.A. She reckoned that if she achieved her goal, she could help out millions of people, young and old, across the nation. Elizabeth became obsessed with the “medical world.” She bought books on medicine, studied by the books in the leisure time, and even began to look at some prestigious medical schools along the way.


In order to pursue her dream, Elizabeth still taught, but only to make enough money for tuition. Before even thinking of applying to medical school, she trained with two doctors, John Dickinson and Samuel Dickinson. She trained with the Dickinsons for several years, and after a while they clearly told her that she was ready for med school. Elizabeth Blackwell faced twenty-eight rejection letters from several medical schools, not because she wasn’t good enough, but because she was a woman. When she finally got accepted to Geneva Medical College in New York, she had to cope with the thought that her acception was nothing more but a cruel joke played on her by the all-male student body. In medical school, Elizabeth faced ridicule on a daily basis and had to be the only female in class on human reproduction. Despite everything, she still managed to earn respect from everyone on campus, teachers and students. Even after receiving her medical degree, Elizabeth still couldn’t find any patients that would let her examine them. Because of the lack of patients in the U.S., Elizabeth went to Paris, where she got ophthalmia from a sick baby and had to have a glass eye implanted. Her eye transplant managed to put her out of work, but not for long.


Lastly, Elizabeth Blackwell accomplished many great things in life. She really proved everyone who didn’t believe in her wrong and graduated number one in her class in 1849. Following in her father’s footsteps, she crusaded for the admission of women to medical schools in the U.S. and Europe and wrote several books on the subject, including Medicine as a Profession for Women and Address on the Medical Education of Women. Elizabeth Blackwell raised ten thousand dollars to open The New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857, staffed entirely by women doctors. Seeing how successful the infirmary turned out to be, Elizabeth Blackwell opened The Women’s Medical College of The New York Infirmary in 1868, and in 1874 she co-founded The London School of Medicine for Women where she served briefly on the faculty. Early on in Elizabeth Blackwell’s life, she decided to be independent and provide for herself. As she was so wrapped up in asserting her independence and making the world a better place for generations of women to come, she never married. However, while she was in Paris, she did adopt an eight-year-old Irish girl, whom she names Katherine Berry Blackwell. In my opinion, Elizabeth Blackwell achieved many more things in life than an average person.


All in all, Elizabeth Blackwell is not only my hero, no, she is my role model. I have to say, that after finding out how many obstacles she overcame, how badly she wanted to change our world for the better, how much courage she had, how much she used her perseverance throughout her life, and how many great things she achieved, it really inspired me to resemble her. I know for a fact though, that I don’t want to be just like her because, well, life is too short to try and be somebody else, I want to make my own imprint on the world. My whole life I wanted to become a doctor, words “Why can’t there be any female doctors?” inspired Elizabeth Blackwell to be one. These words inspired me to become a doctor, “For what is done or learned by one class of women, becomes virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women” (Blackwell).

Is this paper okay?
Oh, yeah. Inspiration, well articulated. Exemplary illustration of character and biography. Good stuff.

toothpaste