But then I did something stupid, or rather, just different. I agreed to attend a holiday party the evening before my Endocrine final. In my mind, this was perfectly logical. I had studied harder than I usually do. I was doing COMBANK questions like I would die tomorrow and somehow still be charged for my subscription. I read BRS and consulted faculty and talked through stuff with people that knew better. I was ready, and so, I would take the night off, and actually sleep.
And I DID do just that. I had drinks and was merry and took pictures and left my notes at home. It was so weird! I've never done that. And yet, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was ready. I had, somewhere in my deep psyche, convinced myself that no matter how much I had prepared, I wasn't ready. I would never be ready. I had made a mistake, somehow, enjoying myself. And I got out of my friend's car at about 10PM, walked up the stairs to my apartment, went to brush my teeth, and something about the toothpaste or my reflection or seeing that it was close to the next day just made it all go downhill from there.
It was so weird. One second I'm totally fine, face made up and hair flat ironed and I'm relaxed (buzzed? Pie-coma? Confident?) and then I'm just a mess, sobbing into the bathroom sink. Like, a scary sobbing. The kind where if someone walked in, maybe they would have thought a family member just passed or that they cancelled the Blacklist or I received news about malignant melanoma. But that wasn't it. I just started crying like a 14 year old broken-hearted girl, and I couldn't stop.
Internal Monologue Veronica said "get a hold of yourself, woman. What is your problem. Crying just makes your eyes puffy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Relax." So maybe 30 minutes go by and with some textual coaching from Mike, everything wraps up nicely. I can breathe.
So why did that happen? What snapped? This was crazy. That was crazy, irrational behavior. But I realized, or more accurately, have come to realize that perhaps the biggest problem that plagues my day to day existence is me and my lack of self-confidence.
To be "ready" for something is such an uncomfortable and foreign feeling. I'm not trying to be flippant or employ the humble-brag here; it's true. I have lived 90% of my post-high school academic life convincing myself that I am the underdog: the under-performing, but high-potential student with the nontraditional background who peaked in high school as summa cum laude and that was it. The starving artist, theater-major who has never taken physiology (<--- true story), about to take a test on Essentially the BODY 101 and ALL ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN YOUR BRAIN AND ADRENALS, DUH, and here I was literally having a mental breakdown that I felt ready.
Doesn't that sound crazy? I live under the assumption that I am never ready, that I have to maximize every conscious moment because I will never perform on par with my peers and if I do, it must be a statistical anomaly. And it's funny because in retrospect, I reinforce that. Someone says, "good job," when I get a B and instead of thinking "hey, thanks," I almost immediately revert to the logic of "well, I really got a C- but that extra 8 questions of lucky guesses really put me undeservedly over my expected performance."
So while I wept like a pathetic delicate flower over my sink, these were the thoughts that permeated my mind. You can't be ready, Veronica. You are not allowed to be ready. If you think you are, you are disillusioned. And disillusionment leads blindly to failure. And thus, you are failing. And it is weird that you have not failed out of medical school yet.
I'm not trying to justify the validity of that way of thinking. In fact, quite the opposite. As medical students, we are already high-achieving. Motivated, smart, intellectually curious, whatever. We strive to be the best in many avenues (some beyond or even excluding the classroom) because it justifies why we are here. Some 7000-8000 applicants, some 600-800 interviews, some 400 acceptances, some 5% chance of getting accepted, pending you even meet the most basic criteria, which after all, isn't really that basic.
I remember applying to medical school in post-bacc. I sat in the library at California State University East Bay, almost ashamed to be typing into my secondary to Pacific Northwest University of the Sciences that I had a degree from UC Irvine, a school that recently ranked FIRST in the US and fifth in the world among universities less than 50 years old by Times Higher Education (shameless plug), but here I was, in a state-school post-bacc, because I obviously couldn't do justice to the prestige of the degree that preceded me. And it was weird that this insecurity still carries over, even after 4 acceptances, multiple interviews, the rare and incredible (really, almost unbelievable), first round luck of med school applications. It's like sometimes, I really can't believe I am still here. That I have hung on and not been given the boot by the very institution that said "we believe in you."
This is my opinion, but I think an easy mistake to associate preparedness with a predictable outcome; more specifically, a medical student that feels ready expecting a 100% on an exam. Self-imposed pressure aside, you can be as ready as you want to, but medical school is medical school. It's not meant to be easy. You can alleviate a lot of the burden of uncertainty by preparing, by studying, by practicing, but you are not in total control of the outcome, just most of it. Being "ready" is not synonymous with "getting A's." I don't need to go into the factors that determine test-taking success; we all know how that works by now. But we forget to let that uncontrollable 10% be variable, we don't like to give up the control. In a similar way, to feel prepared and simultaneously know that there was nothing more to do was so uncomfortable to me, it made me viscerally ill.
For the record, I did just fine on Endocrine (Derm was another story, ha). But I convinced myself I wouldn't, in spite of my hard work. I feel that we all do that, to some degree. Some of us are more vocal about it than others, the rest of us just wear waterproof mascara. The point is, you do what you can, as efficiently as possible, and you leave the rest to the test. It's not meant to be easy.
I would bitch to my mom in high school about how I was always in jeopardy of losing my Varsity spot for Cross Country. "If you want to win races, Veronica, just run faster. It's that simple. But don't expect to win every one. Run faster, but you can't become an Ethiopian Olympian overnight."
Obviously this statement is laden with stereotype, but you get what I'm saying. Do your best, and if you don't like the results, try something harder, something different. But don't freak out if you're not first.
In the meantime, I've been preparing for a couple marathons, both on foot and in my brain. I am taking COMLEX May 29th, and USMLE shortly thereafter. My reasons are my own, and everyone will have their own opinion as to whether or not to take both. But ultimately, I want choices, even if it only means 5 more program options. I've never let money get in the way of my dreams, and sometimes it meant living out of my Hyundai or not eating anything other than canned peaches and working 3 gross jobs, but I don't care. So I'll keep you posted on when I lose my sanity (but hopefully not).
Lastly, I leave you with art I've been doing, just because :)
