Overcoming Self-Doubt? Advice

[workingeagerly_247]

Reaching out to other med students... what was your strategy, or what did you find helpful in overcoming self-doubt?

It's become a crippling issue for me. First began when I scored below avg in my first med school exam (1st time), and it's been snowballing since then - even though my rank is high in my class. But it's starting to creep up me big time. When I study PPT's or FA, I find myself re-reading the same statement 4-7x just to make sure I don't forget it, doubting myself that I might screw it up during an exam and forget it. I even now re-read the same question 3-4x and re-check my answer - causing me to run out of time and lose points on questions I could've answered. I doubt myself all the time, and now while I study, I doubt my memory, thinking skills, etc.

Any tips on what found to be helpful? Anyone go through this?

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[snowflakes]

I find myself re-reading the same statement 4-7x just to make sure I don't forget it, doubting myself that I might screw it up during an exam and forget it. I even now re-read the same question 3-4x and re-check my answer - causing me to run out of time and lose points on questions I could've answered. I doubt myself all the time, and now while I study, I doubt my memory, thinking skills, etc.

Have you thought about taking to someone in your school's counseling office? Since your self-doubt is affecting you to this extent, it sounds like it's something worth getting help with.

 

[operaman]

I would definitely talk to someone in person as there may be some burnout or something else going on here, but in general I think you're experiencing something we all feel to some degree. The process of getting in to medical school conditions us to believe that perfection is both common and required for our success. We are told (truthfully) that any grade less than an A is a step away from medical school. The pre-allo forums are littered with such sentiments along with questions about how many hundreds of hours of shadowing or volunteering do you need and how many first author publications in Nature or Cell would give you a tiny sliver of a chance at a top medical school.

This really has to change once you actually start medical school. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is that nothing you will ever do in this field will be remotely perfect. You will never make the correct diagnosis 100% of the time, nor will you make the right decision every time, or order the right test, or give the correct treatment. Even if you do the "right" thing, there's a huge number of times that the treatment won't work or the patient will be allergic or the test was simply wrong. You learn about sensitivity and specificity in your biostats class, but the underlying concept is that every test is profoundly flawed and never 100% reliable. I know those clinical examples may not be relevant to you at the moment, but I use them as evidence that you will never be able to achieve perfection in this field. Ever.

So what do you do? Simple: find a way to cope. For me personally, that means doing my very best at all times while accepting the fact that I'm going to be wrong more often than I'd like to think. I try to get comfortable with the notion that I'm simply trying to up my batting average, and take some solace from major league baseball where the highest batting average in history was a guy who hit the ball 36% of the time. Obviously I hope I get things right a little more than that, but you get the point.

At the preclinical stage, just accept that you're going to get some questions wrong. If you got an 85% on all your pre-med exams, you probably wouldn't be taking any medical school exams these days. If you get an 85% on Step 1, you would have a scaled score of ~260. Big difference. Even for people at the 99th %ile nationally, they are still missing nearly 15% of the questions.

What this boils down to in practical terms is that you have to think in terms of what is most likely the answer, and then go with it. Imagine if you saw 10 similar questions on the same topic; which answer is going to be right 8 or 9 of those times? Sure, some sneaky professor will tweak it just enough to trick you once or twice, but I'll bet you probably know what the answer "should" be most of the time. Just pick that answer and move on. Yes, you'll miss some. You should probably get used to it.

 

[IrrepressibleMD]

A word of advice from an M.D.: if you want it, if you feel that you were born to do it, NEVER GIVE UP. We have all been there (well, most of us) and it is a tough road. The journey only becomes more arduous as you step into your clinical years, and there will be doubts, but that is what makes us 1% of the worlds population, the strength to push through during those times. There will be failures, and those who are willing to learn from them will make the best doctors.

Never Give Up Your Dreams…….

 

[Psai]

We all suffer from imposter syndrome to a degree. I got my MCAT score back and when it said I had a 37, I was in disbelief. I waited for days for an email coming in saying that they made a mistake and the score was actually for someone else with the same name. Same thing when I got my step score back. And even though I do fine on exams and in class, I always wonder if I'm smart enough, if I'm good enough to be a doctor. I see all these really smart people around me who seem to know everything and it makes me feel small and insignificant. I'm scared that I will forget something that will lead to a bad outcome for the patient. I'm scared that I don't have the drive or the intelligence to be here. I've practiced suturing and tying a million times but when it came to my first real closure, I started shaking so bad on the second interrupted that I could only put down three knots. I can't tell if my physical exam is good enough, sometimes I feel like I'm just miming the movements and not really doing anything real.

But they wouldn't have picked you for medical school if they didn't think you were awesome or if they didn't think you could make it. The vast majority makes it through and become great doctors. You'll do fine bro

 

[ACSurgeon]

Reaching out to other med students... what was your strategy, or what did you find helpful in overcoming self-doubt?

It's become a crippling issue for me. First began when I scored below avg in my first med school exam (1st time), and it's been snowballing since then - even though my rank is high in my class. But it's starting to creep up me big time. When I study PPT's or FA, I find myself re-reading the same statement 4-7x just to make sure I don't forget it, doubting myself that I might screw it up during an exam and forget it. I even now re-read the same question 3-4x and re-check my answer - causing me to run out of time and lose points on questions I could've answered. I doubt myself all the time, and now while I study, I doubt my memory, thinking skills, etc.

Any tips on what found to be helpful? Anyone go through this?

To help with studying- force yourself to study in layers. Let your self-doubt or insecurity force you to read through things 3-4 times. But also force yourself to finish everything once before starting the second pass and so on (or do half the material at a time etc).

It's normal to spend an entire weekend making a first pass through the material and come out thinking "wow I've learned nothing."- don't let the feeling make you obsessive and become stuck on the first lecture and never finish the rest.

 

[tylus]

OP - have confidence in yourself. You've gotten through the rigorous selection process and have been vetted thoroughly. Don't be over-complacent with your work but at the same time try not to over-think things. Read the forums for people's past experiences to understand more about the issues students face. You certainly aren't alone in feeling self-doubt. It's great that you're taking the initiative by coming to the forum for advice. I'm sure we'll be able to work something out.

sneaky professor will tweak it just enough to trick you once or twice

@operaman - unfortunately in my school, the questions are ALWAYS concocted with the idea of tricking us poor students.