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Perfection is Relative

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Relevant competency:  Personal and Professional Development

Medical school was a time of great growth – personally, intellectually, and professionally.  Balancing all of the responsibilities is challenging to say the least.  Devoting all of your time to one area means your attention is often lacking in another.  We simply cannot be everywhere at once and we can’t give 100% effort in every aspect of life at all times.

This is a difficult pill to swallow for the typical medical student who is used to excelling in school, often without significant effort.  Through this I recognized that perfection is relative.

In the first year of medical school, perfection was attending class in-person every day, taking notes, then going home to rewatch those lectures and fill in what I missed.  I kept up with this fairly well and was able to maintain a social life, making quite a few new friends.

In the second year, my focuses shifted some to accommodate new responsibilities like research and student orgs.  Perfection at that point was watching through my lectures from home once with good note taking, attending all of my meetings, and prioritizing personal time at the end of the day.  I had become more efficient academically, and this allowed me to do more extracurricularly, which I loved.

Third and fourth year took a left turn.  After both of my parents passed away in 2020 my idea of what perfection was changed drastically.  Now not only was I balancing clinical rotations, research, and student orgs, I was tackling grief, sadness, anxiety, legal issues, and estate proceedings.  Not being able to be 100% in on everything at every time altered my idea of perfection to be – just doing my best.  Just doing my best on clinical rotations and not sweating the small stuff.  Just doing my best on research and taking a few steps back for a few months.  Just doing my best in my personal life and making myself a priority to get through the days.  I wasn’t perfect at any of those, but I did my best.

Currently sitting in early to mid fourth year, I can see my personal and professional growth over the past few years.  One of my biggest lessons from medical school is that perfection is relative to the situation you’re in.  We can’t hold ourselves to unattainable standards.  Sometimes life comes at you and doing your best is your perfection.  Moving forward into residency, I will continue to do my best in all areas, balancing the days when I’m 80% in one area and 20% in the other with a 20/80 day the next time.  I will give myself grace when looking at my to-do lists and my performance.  I will also encourage similar personal wellness among my peers, as its easy to get caught up in being perfect when in reality, perfection is relative.

Maintaining Professionalism in Difficult Situations

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Relevant competency:  Professionalism

Conflicting opinions arise in all aspects of life, whether personal or professional.  Early in medical school I encountered a situation that tested my professionalism and helped me grow in that area.

I was selected to be the analytics chair for a student organization where I collected data on our organization’s summer program performance.  After our summer program ended, I was unfortunately faced with the scenario where our 2nd year data was being used by prior leadership for research submissions without our consent or proper acknowledgement.  This was challenging and the first time I encountered this scenario in academic medicine.  I knew I needed to stand up for myself, the work I did, and the other members of my executive board, but wasn’t sure how to best approach it.

Ultimately, myself and the president of our 2nd year group asked the prior leadership to sit down in person to discuss the situation.  Our goal was to maintain professionalism while expressing our concerns with the use of our data without our knowledge.  In a very productive, respectful meeting we heard their side of the scenario and came to a resolution where we were stronger as a collective leadership team for the blossoming organization moving forward.

My professional skills grew as a result of this encounter. First, it emphasized that professionalism always wins. Myself and the president could have easily gotten angry and handled this differently.  Instead we knew we needed to come to a solution that most benefited the organization as a whole and the best way to do that was to have a discussion face-to-face.  Through that we learned that this was a simple misunderstanding between their team on who was going to bring us in the loop on the submission.  Misunderstandings and mistakes happen daily and handling them professionally is key.  The abstract was ultimately accepted at the conference and we all grew professionally from our discussions.

Second, I learned that standing up for what is right is always the right thing to do. I questioned whether I wanted to speak up, given they were the founders of the organization. However, after our meeting I was proud of myself standing up for what was right.  Speaking up can be hard in medical school, whether it is to peers or to a superior on a rotation. However, if you truly believe in something, it is worth it to speak up and have a productive discussion about it.

Being able to constructively bring up a conflicting opinion is part of being a professional. We aren’t always going to agree with those around us — life would be quite boring if that was the case. I carried forward the lessons learned here into my 3rd and 4th years of medical school when conflict occurred on my rotations.  Going forward into residency I plan to continue to craft my professional presence by fostering inclusive, collaborative environments and discussions and use constructive ways to speak up for the things I feel passionate about.

Heads Up Abstract