Failure Secondary Question

[sratscience]

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Hi all,
I'm currently trying to answer the question, "Recount a time when you failed or made a decision you regret. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?"

My honest-to-god biggest regret is that I saw my younger sibling going down a bad path and didn't even attempt to stop them. We simply weren't close and I didn't think it was any of my business. He ended up ODing (he's okay now though!) and it really affected my whole family. Ever since then, we've been a lot closer and I'm a lot more protective of him.

Would this be okay to talk about? I worry that it'll seem like I'm focusing on his bad decision instead of my own, and also that ignoring his problem will paint me in a bad light.

 

[deleted972488]

I think it's fine.

 

[Cornfed101]

I'm curious how you would talk about this. What would you do differently? Babysit him? If you have a good answer for how you would have behaved differently then I think it is a fine topic.

The point of the failure essay is to show that you are humble enough to acknowledge your weaknesses. Don't worry about it painting you in a bad light.

 

[sratscience]

I'm curious how you would talk about this. What would you do differently? Babysit him? If you have a good answer for how you would have behaved differently then I think it is a fine topic.

The point of the failure essay is to show that you are humble enough to acknowledge your weaknesses. Don't worry about it painting you in a bad light.

I think the main thing I should’ve done was tell someone. I didn’t tell my parents or anything because I didn’t want to get involved, but he was only 15 so telling them could’ve made a big difference.

 

[Orangekiwi]

I wrote about something similar, but the advice I would give you is to make sure that the essay is about YOU. It's easy when writing about sensitive stuff like this to make it about the other person (your younger sibling), which is totally understandable. It's hard to write about how something like that impacted you without feeling like you're stealing their story and making it about yourself, and I struggled for a while to strike the right balance. Ask yourself what concrete things you think you failed at in this scenario (should have spent more time with them, been more open, asked them about their struggles, etc) and how those failures have shaped your thoughts, opinions, or actions in a way that you will take with you into medicine.

 

[Oedipa Maas]

I screen secondary applications and this sounds similar to a prompt that I grade. Honestly, I see "interpersonal relationship failure" as a choice for this prompt a lot and very rarely is it done well. Unless you can really follow what Orangekiwi suggested, I wouldn't advise this. You should write about a tangible thing that you did wrong that led to a failure, show insight into why you failed, how you addressed this failure, and how you ensured that it didn't happen again. That's why interpersonal relationships are tough for this topic - not tangible, often murky, not necessarily (entirely) your responsibility, fixing it requires two people, and you aren't really able to ensure that it doesn't happen again since it involves another person's autonomy.

It sounds like the question is asking you about a failure or regret, not your biggest.

Edit: Coming across more of these and wanted to elaborate. Depending on the situation you choose, it also creates a situation where I feel bad that you went through that and think "You were a kid, you couldn't have been expected to have changed this monumental issue, realistically we never could have known what you doing those things you didn't do at the time would have done to the situation as a whole". So then it puts me in a weird spot grading the response because you've written this immense, intangible problem with no clear solution where hindsight is maybe 20/20 maybe not and I'm supposed to be grading you on very clear criteria.

 

[Cornfed101]

It sounds like the question is asking you about a failure or regret, not your biggest.

Even if it was, the school wouldn’t actually know or be able to verify if it actually was your biggest failure

 

[Oedipa Maas]

Even if it was, the school wouldn’t actually know or be able to verify if it actually was your biggest failure

Absolutely, it just sounded like OP was focusing on their "biggest" failure in the way they asked the question, and not any failure where they could demonstrate responsibility, humility, problem solving, etc. The prompt is merely asking for any failure.