Fear of Failing during PA school

[mhgutierrez02]

Hey everyone ! Melissa Gutierrez MPAS, PA-C , graduated December 2017. thought I would share my experience of failing during PA school 

Today I will write about my hardships during PA school , specifically failing. 

YES I did fail while in PA school, I'm human and I struggled.

I failed the medicine part of the neurological module-- it was the last module of the fall semester , and I was tired. Neurology throughout PA school was something i struggled with , it wasn't my strenght. 

During them module I would get easily confused and overwhelmed with the information. It was apparent to me that I was intimidated which is why I had such a hard time comprehending material .

This goes for anything in life, when you allow the intimidation of things take over it can blind your vision. I knew I didn't have a good background on neurology, I knew that i had a hard time learning this so eveyrtime i studied the matieral i would easily get frustrated. And this was the issue , I was allowing myself to get  frustrated even before I tried to really understand it. 

During PA school , you will not know everything, you won't get A's in everything, its not all going to make sense-- and truth is that is OK!

PA school is only 2.5 years but this career takes a lifelong commitment.  PA school is there to lay a good foundation , to get you started into this profession but truth is you won't be great right away. It's going to take time, trial and error ,and lots of learning to get you to where you need to be.

I realized that instead of seeing it in a negative light , I should want to improve in neurology because truth is in family medicine I will see my fair share of neurological diagnosis. I can't run away from it , and everything during PA school was telling me that i needed to put in some extra work in this organ system. 

I started breaking it down even more than what i usually do, sometimes even take 1 day to review 1-3 diagnosis vs 5-10. 

I started trying to understand why i was missing it because who cares if i miss on an exam , it will matter if i miss it in a real person. 

I made sure everyday I reviewed neurology , and honestly it paid off. When I took my PANCE i got 100 % on the neurological portion and honestly this was a reward in itself for me because not only did i pass my pance but i succeeded a goal that I set out for myself. 

If you fail or struggle during PA school it is OK , instead of getting frustrated try to see why you are struggling and remember it's never about you its about the patients, so always be better, always learn more, and always improve.

In this career and profession is not about getting perfect scores , its about truly understanding the material , these are peoples lives we are in charge of , so work a little hard, hustle everyday, love what you do , and the pay off is worth it for you and your patients. 

- blog: melissa-gutierrez.simplesite.com 

 

[chelize]

This is so far my favorite post! I am a perfectionist and I know I will struggle with failing in the program. I am the harshest critic of myself, and everyone has told me that I will fail at something, so be prepared. Thank you for sharing your experiences!