I failed

No, I didn’t get an F in medical school. And no, I did not fail my boards. But I did fail. It happened in my first year of medical school. I hope by sharing this story you can avoid the mistakes I made and recognise that failure is part of success.

My first year was far more demanding than I had expected, and I was soon struggling to keep up. Fortunately, I was assigned a tutor. I can remember our first encounter as though it were yesterday. I left for my appointment, and I was delayed on the way with no means to let him know that I would be late. This was a time before mobile phones and credit card calls. By the time I arrived my tutor was furious.

The encounter began, “How dare you waste my time like that? I am a full professor, and you have no right to be late.” The fact is that I was wrong. After what seemed like an eternity, I was dismissed and received no help in medicine that day. He did, however, agree to meet me again. I wonder if he saw the tears welling in my eyes.

I met him weekly for months. I spent hours and hours learning physiology, but I spent at least as much time trying to make up for my failure. I got to appointments hours early. I studied my professor’s homeland and tried to learn about his culture and language. I asked specific questions in the sessions so that he knew that not only was I interested in his help but also in him as a person. I gained the knowledge necessary to complete the course, and I learnt about a new culture and about a full professor’s career path. I found myself looking forward to each visit.

Now I am a professor at a US medical school, and I work with struggling students. My experience has taught me behaviours that I should avoid as well as skills and attitudes that can serve my students. Because I worked to form a relationship with my faculty tutor, I put more effort into my learning—and so did the professor. Now I show my students that I am interested in them as people, their human trials, and their dreams. They, in turn, put in extra effort. Even potentially difficult interactions have been sweetened because I had built a relationship.

I had some great experiences in medical school, and even the bad experiences have a good lesson. I need to help each student identify these lessons. I hope that this time I don’t fail.

Competing interests: None declared.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

   

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