The Importance of Vulnerability
Medicine can consume you before you see your first cadaver. You’re supposed to ace the classes, not just pass them. You must kill the MCAT, not only take it. You’re to be compassionate, but it only counts if you have more than 100 hours of volunteering that maybe turned into a leadership position and is it clinical? Because oh-ho. You need to have clinical experience too. You also have to exemplify involvement in areas other than medicine. Be a normal person. And tell your story in both engaging written and oral forms. Otherwise, it didn’t happen.
When you decide to go for something big, like medicine, inherent in the phrase “something big” is the potential for failure. On the spectrum of failure, medicine is perceived to be closer to epic fail than dust-your-jeans-off fail simply because it takes a while to become a successful medical school applicant.
In this scramble for perfection, I have periodically lost touch. I’ve become enraptured by productivity, efficiency, and consuming as much relevant information as a day will allow. It’s the academic’s FOMO that makes us determined to know as much as possible so as not to be the least intelligent person in the room. It can quickly get destructive and I’m trying to catch myself now because I imagine it can only get worse in medical school if I don’t.
I’ve started to listen to an audiobook lecture by Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability. (Here is her TED Talk on the same subject. Also embedded at the end of this post.) She talks about the responsibilities and obligations we put on ourselves and how they can create a sense of shame, which can be debilitating. She reminded me of a comic I was shown on how we “should” ourselves. I don’t know if my 18-year-old-self understood it correctly, but I took it to mean that when we create mental lists of what we “should” be doing and who we “should” be, we’re should-ing ourselves and shitting on ourselves.
I don’t want to shit on myself. Literally or figuratively. I’m really proud to be where I am, but especially only 3 years after deciding on this career path. It only takes milliseconds to forget this if I compare my success to someone else’s who I perceive to have done it better/faster/whatever-er. I actively fought against this mentality during my postbacc because I knew it is both ridiculous and destructive. But damn, I feel it creeping back up and I am determined to squash it before starting school!
In the purgatory between postbacc and med school, as almostdrrach put it, I am determined to better love myself and others by chilling out, going out, and enjoying company as much as possible. Many of my relationships have suffered because I have been so hyper-focused on getting into medical school. Some culminated in a natural progression but others have been strained by my absence. Re-engaging feels like learning to walk again, but I’m taking one step at a time. I don’t want to be a med-monster only focused on professional goals. I want to be in touch with my loved ones and the new people I come across. It will not only better serve me but also my future patients.
The Importance of Vulnerability was originally published on Premed to MD
