the same things happen to me in lab. do you think sucking in lab correlates with sucking as a doctor? i think i want to do neurosurg (hence me working in a neuro lab), but i always worry that if i can't even handle lab experiments and get so stressed out by them, how am i ever going to handle something like neuro surgery?
Seriously? You sound, word for word, like I did a couple of years ago. Asking the same exact questions. Twilight Zone, eh?
Which, for you, is good luck, because I understand where you're coming from!
Ask any surgeon, and they will tell you: Skills are LEARNED. You aren't born with some. Sure, some people naturally start a different levels of coordination and mechanics. That tells you about your beginning, not where you end up. You have to start somewhere. You WILL screw up. Sorry. If you cannot get over that, then you need to find another field. BUT, even though I don't know you, I'm going to tell you to get over it.
You know what makes a top surgeon? Hard headedness. You have to be stubborn enough to do the same things over and over again, screw up after screw up. Also, keep in mind that many mistakes are not necessarily immediately going to automatically kill your patient. Obviously, some might, depending on what you are doing. Yes yes, we know this.
Also, remember that surgery is quite different from your bench lab research. I myself work in a neuro lab (can we get any more similar?) We do dissections under microscopes with extremely thin wires. At the beginning? Sucked. But I was so extremely interested that I spent time.
Good surgeons spend time on their craft. There's a reason why surgical residencies take so long: you not only have to develop your hand skills, but you have to learn WHEN to cut. You know this, blah blah, whatever.
The point, is that, you will still be developing skills way into your practice (after residency) and will peak much later. You'll always be learning. As a surgeon, you will not perform 300 types of procedures. You'll pick a handful, and really work on those. There's also much else that I'm not drawing right now, and at the risk of not doing the field justice, as I am but a lowly student, I'll digress.
Tl;dr: No, your performance in your bench research does not tell you much, if anything, about how you will perform as a doctor (surgeon in your case). It DOES tell you where you can certainly improve. Right now, it's about the practicing the mental gymnastics and critical thinking, organization skills, etc. that are vital. Even so, you'll always (hopefully) be developing those.
And, ask yourself if you're really stressed out about ****ing up your experiments, or if it's actually that you worry about proving yourself "correct" about your skills (which can absolutely be improved). It'd be pretty damn difficult to focus and NOT make mistakes if, in the back of your mind, you're always saying "See, I knew it. I'm going to kill all of my patients."
Hence, my signature
