“School is for making mistakes and learning from them, it is why you’re here.” 

These were the kind words of my checkout doctor this morning after I made—as I like to call it—a “rookie” mistake with my patient. If you’re anything like me, failing is tough. I’m naturally a competitive person and hate to lose. I mean I really hate to lose. I could be walking into a restaurant and if a stranger is also walking up to the door, I will walk faster just to beat them. Formal competition or not, I want to win. This can be a curse for me, however, because when I don’t “win,” I beat myself up and basically have a pity party for the rest of the day.   

This mindset injects itself into optometry school through exams & quizzes. I could receive an 89% on an exam and be stoked but if my classmates score a 90%, I’m bummed out. Furthermore, if I do everything right on a patient’s exam but forget to run a test or miss a step in my exam flow, I get down on myself.  

Why do I do this? Why do I beat myself up when mistakes are made? I believe I feel this way because I set my expectations for perfection. I expect to get an A on every test and expect to run every patient exam perfectly.   

Have you ever spoken with someone who seemed to know it all? You start telling them about the movie you saw over the weekend or the trip you took over the summer and they interrupt you before you can finish to tell you they’ve been to that destination 13 times, saw the movie before it was released, and they solved world peace in the process.  In their mind, they knew it all and had nothing to learn from your experience. That was their expectation and as a result, that was their outcome.  

I have begun to realize that if I expect to do perfectly on a test or exam, my ability to listen and learn from others quickly fades. In my mind I think I know it all, so why should I ask questions or listen to someone else? The truth is, I need to swallow the pill of humility more often and realize No. 1, I don’t know it all. No. 2, I am in school to ask questions, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.  

Instead of expecting perfection, I need to expect growth.

This will yield far more development in my ability as a student, clinician, and one day as a doctor.  If you are anything like me, I encourage you to recalibrate your expectations to focus on growth instead of perfect outcomes. In the words of my checkout doctor, “School is for making mistakes and learning from them, it’s why you’re here.”