Prompt: Tell us about an instance of failure that you encountered.
“As an MS3, I failed my surgery shelf. Nobody ever talks to you about failing. And I had always read these anonymous posts about failing pre-clinical exams and shrugged them off, because until clerkship, I had been lucky. That hubris caught up to me. I have felt the shame. I have felt the pressure. I’m still here. And I’m still sticking to surgery. It happens, it’s certainly not ideal, but you will get through it.”
“Love this! I failed the Mod 2 pulmonology course.”
“Failing wasn’t a fear that had crossed my mind much until clerkship came around. I struggled through my first clerkship, never knowing how to satisfy my superiors’ expectations. When they told me I failed in the end, my view on life changed. While I had to be confident and strong during the appeal process, I have since had difficulty knowing if I can ever be confident again. I know deep inside now that I will always have to struggle and then some in order to succeed in our medical system. The rest of clerkship has been a struggle, and this has been the hardest year of my life. I have a hard time seeing other students act so at ease without thinking that there must be something wrong with me; I’m not cut out for this. But what keeps me going is knowing that I don’t need medicine, but I strongly believe that I can bring positive contributions to medicine, despite my weaknesses. My weaknesses don’t negate my strengths. Working on my weaknesses is not a requirement; it is a choice I have the power to make. Some skills come easier for me than they do for others. Others skills do not. But I get to choose to take extra time preparing and practicing those skills for myself rather than for my superiors. Know yourself. You are unique, so take what other’s say with a grain of salt.”
“Being at an institution like Penn for medical school, I knew that my classmates would be stellar, but I didn’t realize just how much everyone seemed to have their shit together compared to me. During our first year, no one seemed to think staying on top of lectures was painful. No one seemed to think anatomy lab was mind-boggling in the terms of material or emotional burden. No one seemed to be bothered by volunteering in 8 clinics, writing 23 research manuscripts, shadowing 75 hours, and establishing 14 mentors within the first semester of school.
With 0 hours of clinic volunteering, 0 hours of research, 0 shadowing hours, 0 mentors, and many hours spent on studying concepts my peers seemed to pick up on after hearing once (while watching a lecture at 3x the normal speed), I felt inadequate. I was not only failing to live up to the PSOM pillar of “excellence” with all its glistening pride and glory, but I was also failing at not comparing myself to others.
We’re told all the time to not get caught up in looking around at what others are doing, but here was something that I was succeeding at!! Honestly, as an MS2, I’m still succeeding at buying into peers’ perceived or actual ease with which they glide through medical school.
Well, now I’ve failed at writing an essay about failure because I’ve only written about my successes in sabotaging my self-esteem. Maybe I’ve found something I’m better at than my classmates!”
“I want desperately to be Cindy Christian’s friend so early on in medical school I introduced myself and told her I liked her equation (the social determinants of health one she invented). She said “nice to meet you! do you remember the equation?” I totally forgot the equation and looked like an idiot in front of my hero. Im that moment I felt like a complete loser/failure/imposter. Luckily she’s as kind as she is impressive, laughed it off, and reminded me there are lots of things to memorize in medical school :-)”
“I pronounced naloxone as “nox-ala-lone” repeatedly during a question to an expert on the opioid epidemic in front of my entire class.”
“During my neurology rotation, our team was taking care of a complicated patient. The and attending sent me and the psychiatry intern to interview the patient, and report back to her. Long story short, the psych intern basically convinced me that the patient had this rare diagnosis that I had never heard of before. I presented it to the attending and her first response was “… really? That’s what you think he has?”. And then the intern did not come to my rescue. The attending then made me do a presentation the next day on that rare diagnosis. Although I don’t think it necessarily impacted my grade, in that moment it felt like a pretty big failure and my self confidence was low for the rest of my time with that attending.”
“When I was little I was skiing with my family and I was terrified of a new, very steep run. I cried non-stop at the top, filled with worry, dread, and fear for my life that I would fall. I finally bucked you’re the courage and started the run. I made one turn before I fell and tumbled down half the hill. I fell for almost a full minute.
My mom raced to get to me, convinced I would be a wreck. When she got to me, however, she was shocked to see a huge smile on my face. “THAT’S the worst that can happen??” I asked, before jumping up and skiing off. I re-did the run, this time skiing it top to bottom with a huge smile on my face.
I failed 2 classes during Mod1. When I got the emails saying I had failed I felt a similar dread, fear, sadness. I felt like I had left myself, and everyone who was rooting for me, down. And then I dig deep, I studied way harder than I had before, and I remediated no-sweat. As I finished my first remediation i had that same “THAT’S the worst that can happen??” moment.
Fear of failure is a fear of the unknown. We fear what might happen, what might be the consequences, that people might view us differently. It feels like tumbling down a mountain, not sure when you’re going to stop, afraid people will see you as less than, worried about the bumps we are getting as we tumble. But when we get to the bottom of our fall we realize that we are the same, the people who love us still love us, and all that’s different now is that we took a slightly less enjoyable route to the end goal.
So we pick ourselves up off the ground, dust off the snow, and finish the run. We do it again, this time more confident, more secure in our skis and the mountain beneath us. Failure is looking into the unknown. Success is staring into the unknown and asking ourselves “THAT’s the worst that can happen??”
“I failed to speak up and vocalize what I thought were the right answers during the anatomy team exam.”
“I feel like I’m on the precipice of failing every week. I know I’ll get through the next few years one way or another, but the potential of failing continues to scare me. It’s what stopped me from finishing pre-med when I received a B on my first Biology exam in college, an overwhelming time that led me to conclude that it was over. Only after a while did I finally having the courage to return to medicine. While I am here now, the seemingly invincible armors of knowledge and intelligence that my peers wear keep me wondering whether I’ll ever be competent in my field of choice, or whether I will even ultimately have a choice in a specialty if I can’t seemingly retain any information we’ve learned so far. Since starting medical school, I’ve failed midterms, I’ve failed to take care of myself, I’ve struggled in small group, I’ve failed to take time off to relax, and I’ve failed in living up to promises made to my family and friends, however large or small. While I’m trying to stave off this constant feeling of slipping down a cliff, which is really only a cliff of my own imagination, I’ve been trying to stay content with my own little wins and strengths, while resisting the urge to monitor the average class exam scores in Oasis. What is failure in reality? Often, its a feeling borne out of our own messy, convoluted constructs and worldview. The feeling of failure often stems from not measuring up to a standard defined by a testing body, an institution, or our own imagination. That feeling shouldn’t be shameful, it shouldn’t have the power to inhibit us from our dreams, but rather it’s a feeling that sometimes happens and is completely normal.”
“I put a ton of time and effort into trying to honor a clerkship rotation I thought I was very interested in at the time, and came up short.”
“As an attending on an inpatient service a patient complained of a new and significant symptom during the day. We did an examination and decided to monitor the symptom but did not otherwise work it up. That evening the night resident called me to let me know that she suspected a severe and emergent diagnosis and her work-up confirmed her findings. As a result of her outstanding clinical judgment and action the patient had a timely work-up of the medical issue. I was very very glad that she caught this but at the same time humbled and – to be honest – embarrassed that I did not previously consider the diagnosis that she correctly identified.”
