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Synaptic Kiss Personal Statement

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Thousands of neurotransmitters rush through the axon terminal, flying into the millimeter-long chasm before meeting the beckoning dendrites of the new neuron. It is the brain’s most beautiful gift: the “synaptic kiss”

I am many things—an advocate, a researcher, the owner of an expansive collection of dog-eared classics. I can cook minute rice in thirty seconds and spew countless statistics on the dangers of secondhand smoke.

Yet, after all my tobacco control work, the field of science had thus far failed to satiate my intellectual voracity. That was, until the first semester of my senior year, as my psychology class tackled the Goliath that was the brain unit.

As we pieced together the different segments of neural networks and glial cells, Mrs. Hobbs taught us how neurotransmitters bind to their receptor sites A miraculous journey dubbed the “synaptic kiss”.

Something about that euphemism stimulated me, brought me to the forefront. …show more content…
The tenuous cycle of experimentation, tolerance, addiction, and withdrawal. At Penn, I imagine myself as a future substance abuse counselor, conducting elaborate longitudinal studies to test the effects of dependency and psychoactive drugs. Working at Penn’s Center for Studies of Addiction and Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Nicotine Addiction, I can truly focus on the pith of my passions—nicotine addiction and tobacco control. Research Programs of CIRNA like Adolescents and Young Adults or Tobacco Products and Communication broaden the extensive prevention work I dedicated my time to in high

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