FINALLY, something I can meaningfully contribute to.
I could give you a ‘boo-hoo’ story about how i failed to get into medical school the first time. Well I am. It was absolutely soul-crushing and morale-decimating. It was one of the hardest struggles I’ve ever had. It threw me into an identity crisis and compounded with my in-progress imposter syndrome in ways that would spark nothing but self-loathing and depression.
For months I agonized and isolated myself in my room until I realized that If I don’t try for my own future, no one else can or will. Took a bit of self reflection to realize the fault lied with me. Took me an even longer time to figure out what mistakes killed my application, how, why, and formulate a plan to avoid repetition. The process took me 3 years. I won’t tell you exactly how old I am, but people my age are getting married, buying houses, making 6-figure incomes, etc. By contrast, I am barely making minimum wage and banding together couch surfing and splitting rent with my friends.
It’s tough not to compare myself to everyone else’s situations. This was made worse by the fact my family and friends (maybe 45% of them) constantly shit talk me behind my back. Sometimes wine comes back up the grape-vine. Sometimes it isn’t a sweet Rosso. I kept chugging along despite some of my friends and family acting as headwinds against me.
I kept up this process for 3 years, believing that I could actually do it. That maybe one day I won’t be earning 10 dollars an hour working 50 hours a week. Most of all, I felt that I had a real purpose and goal to work toward. Medicine.
I am very proud to report to Lemmy that I actually got accepted to 5 different medical schools so far! I felt bad even turning down one offer for another.
How I got over my failure and crisis of identity? Maybe it was ego. Maybe it was my hurt pride. Maybe it was selfishness. Maybe it’s because I am too stubborn to take “no” for an answer for something that means so much to me. I choose to believe that I worked hard for it and was able to swallow my pride and keep on chugging along patiently working for the light at the end of the tunnel.
Don’t get me wrong, the light at the end of the tunnel is still an on-coming train. Medical school is hell. I realize it is nothing but hard work and suffering. Nothing would make me happier than to go into a field that makes a direct difference in people’s lives.
TLDR: Medical school :D -> rejection D: -> depression D: -> epiphany :/ -> hard work :( -> a brighter future perhaps :).
This isn’t a general formula or anything. I just haven’t been able to talk to anyone about any of this. I feel that emptying out my feelings into the void of the internet might be kind of therapeutic. I never thought I’d share any of my deepest feelings on the internet, let alone reddit. Here, I feel comfortable to do so.
Plant the seed. Keep on watering. As long as the soil you choose to plant isn’t salted, you will reap the rewards your past self has sown.
I just read into it. Interesting. I thought resilience or robustness covered that, but it is an entirely unique term.
I’m honored you think so highly of me! In truth, I am a pretty fragile human being. My feelings are easily hurt, etc. (though I know this is different than you mean) I am working on being a little more thick skinned and such.
Congratulations!!! Yeah, it’s a long road ahead, but you’ve got the in now. You’ve passed the biggest barrier to entry. After this, it’s a marathon, but an exclusive one that you managed to get a spot at. I know you’ll be a great doctor, especially because you have humbler beginnings than some and know how it felt to struggle. Humility is a big part of being an empathetic human being and a good doctor. You got this!
I know it’s way too early to say, but what field do you think you’ll end up in?
I was thinking of psychiatry or internal medicine!
Mental health is at an all-time low nowadays. I think it is a field I can make a more significant difference in. Speaking of higher ambitions, If i do choose psychiatry, I aim to become a lobbyist for mental health as well.
That’s a very admirable goal! Definitely a field that takes a lot of mental fortitude!
Good luck and I hope you enjoy whatever field you end up in. I’m not a doctor nor am I planning to become one, but I’m partial to pathology myself…although it isn’t patient facing.
It has been said that you only really fail if you don’t learn from the experience, this is true in most cases, escpacially those that makes you ask this question.
So to answer your question, you learn snd show others that you have learned.
Say you are working a papermill and you make a misstake causing and entire batch of product worth €5000000 to be ruined, a bad manager would just fire you, a good manager would understand that he just spent €5000000 training you not to do that, and that training would stick, and keep you.
Did three years in the feds. Damn near ruined my life but I worked hard and became an essential employee at a company that was willing to hire me knowing my past.
I wanna say I’m blessed or some shit but in reality I fucked up bad paid the price then fixed it with the help of good people.
College was a fucking mess. It took me 14 years on and off to graduate and wrecked my finances.
But I fucking finished it.
Then I had trouble getting a job in my field and I worked retail for years and it sucked. But I eventually got a job at the front desk of the permit office at the city, and everything started coming together. Within 6 months I got a major promotion. A year later another, smaller city approached me, etc.
I am now making good money in a field I love. My coworkers are great, people respect me, and life is getting better all the time.
Because while I may have stalled several times, I never fucking quit.
My life is a string of failures. I won’t lie I’m probably not a person you want to end up like.
The way I keep going now is by realizing that the thing I’m running from isn’t a sense of failure, or a bad self image. The things I’m running from are literal hunger, literal pain, literal cold. As in, I’ve been homeless before, and I’m fortunate enough to have come through that intact, but it put a fear into me that drives me.
The reason I keep trying is because I’ve seen how fast it gets worse when I stop trying. Like, at my age things fall apart fucking fast if I start letting the depression win.
I’m now at the point where I know the steps I need to take to keep depression away. And I’m considering depression to be like “A state of no motivation”.
I’m starting to get a little stable, which is making space to see new larger meanings, larger than just keeping myself alive and out of pain.
Now I’m starting to see the other people around me trapped in the hopelessness. So I’ve decided I’m going to start being that one person who makes new social connections. Who reaches out and takes the initiative. Because others have done that for me.
So, staying alive gives me the motivation to get up and push hard. But not always consistently. Now, I’m starting to run into limitations in my social skills. I’m rough, and caustic. I cuss a lot.
Now the whole game is learning to keep a tight operation. I can afford to fall off many different wagons, while I’m surviving, and still survive. I’m actually pretty hardy, and I can survive a lot of the effects of my fuckups in life.
But what can’t survive those intermittent collapses — those junk food and weed binges — is my role in the community. I want to be there for people who need someone, and if I’m inconsistent then I can’t do that.
So that’s the meaning pulling me up from fighter into … shopkeeper? Priest? I don’t know. Someone with a consistent schedule, whom you know where to find, who’s got the energy and time to give you some attention when you badly need it.
I flunked out of college. I was undiagnosed ADHD and my major was something that I genuinely have a passion for. But wasn’t able to discipline myself to go to classes regularly. I don’t think I would have done well in that field anyway.
It didn’t really hurt me though, I ended up in a job that underpaid for too long until I got proper medical treatment for my ADHD and depression. Now I make a decent salary in a field that works well for me.
I love what I learned and would love to learn more, but the structure of college was something that was extremely tough to work through.
Hey, this is my exact story, including the undiagnosed ADHD, dropping out of college, the dead-end wage slavery for way too long, and now having a decent paying job that isn’t what I went to school for, but that also doesn’t kill my soul.
Except: I have an epilogue!
I still don’t have a degree, but I never stopped practicing my art because I am simply incapable of stopping. It’s what I do. I recently got a side gig that was my absolute unrealistic pie-in-the-sky dream job when I was in college, working for the very creators that inspired me to choose my major in the first place. College wasn’t what got me there. It was passion for the artform, introspection/therapy to develop a more forgiving and accepting attitude toward myself, and sheer perseverance. I spent the first 18 years of my adult life thinking failure and dead ends were all the universe had to offer, but I kept trying anyway (mostly to spite that hostile universe in a ‘fuck you, kill me yourself’ kind of way).
It’s not over until it’s over. You don’t know how your story ends. Keep trying. If someone says you missed your chance, fuck 'em. They can’t see the future any more clearly than you.
I don’t usually get back up, I just go somewhere else or do something else where the novelty makes me feel like I haven’t failed yet. Weirdly, I got pretty good at things over time doing this and I fail a lot less
The last time I failed at something at it being 100% my fault, was when I had to turn in a report on a fictional hotdog stand. It was a report about how you keep it clean and stuff. I had gotten it ready and was all set for turning it in. So while eating lunch at i suddenly remember that I had forgotten. So I call the school and they say ‘tough luck’ and that i have to wait an entire month to try again.
Well, it turned out i could just turn in the same report, but I got an entire month extra up prepare, and defend it on the same day as my classmates. I never really understood how any of that worked.
Currently in the throes of attempting to trade for a living.
What has helped me immensely is to ‘denature’ goals so that I can measure success beyond something binary like “did I achieve X”. Instead, I will specify more subtle signs of progress/improvement, and track those instead. That way, even when I fall short of the ideal outcome, I still have actionable, helpful takeaways that can assist w/ my next attempt. Repeat ad nauseum until success.
Another suggestion is to read books like ‘Grit’ and ‘Resilience’ and ‘Mindset’.
Had a good wallowing, thinking my life was over. Then slept on it. But yeah - just a refusal to let whatever it was be the end. And to continue not for others but for myself.
Actually I see failing as the key to success. It either tells me what I did wrong and what are the things I need to improve or that the thing I tried to achieve was not for me and I can go on improving elsewhere.
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