Downward Spiral Day

When I was in undergrad, I'd have days that I'd call "downward spiral" days. These were the days that I managed to convince myself that I would never get into med school and that the earth was, no doubt, spinning out of control and headed directly toward the sun, where we would all be engulfed and die instantly. This was usually brought on by a test or assignment grade in the 87-89% range instead of the required-for-med-school/required by my own crazy self-standard 97-100% range. Obviously we're all still alive and I managed to make it into med school, so my imaginary downward spiral never really resulted in much more than a few hours of self-loathing followed by picking myself up off the couch, dusting the cookie crumbs from my mouth and getting on with things.

I hadn't had a downward spiral day since my pre-med days.....until today. Well, this past week could be considered a downward spiral week. You see, this past module (Infectious Disease) was crap! I consistently score in the "High Satisfactory" range, or "B" to those lay people out there who don't understand our overly technical too-cool-to-use-letters-for-grades-med-school-grading lingo. This past block I got a "Satisfactory." JUST satisfactory. And for all of you out there who don't ascribe to the afore mentioned grading lingo, it's the grade letter after B. And I missed getting my standard grade by about 1%. On top of all this, the last module was 6 weeks - which gives me 6 weeks of letter-grade-after-B, thus derailing my course to a 3.00 for my first 2 years. I'll have to get "Superior" grades in the next 2 blocks to get a 3.00, so I guess it's still possible, but let me indulge in my downward spiral a little longer.

As if this grade debauchery wasn't enough, the powers that be made us take a standardized test over the subject matter covered in this ill-organized, ill-taught block. To make a long story short: I sucked it up! This is what really catapulted me into the spiral! After several minutes spent comparing my score to that of my peers and that of the rest of the 2nd year med students in the country, I've determined that I'm exceedingly average. Blah! Maybe even (gasp!) a bit below average. This is a lot to process for someone who is used to being in the top of EVERYTHING. For the love of PETE, I was in the 98 percentile in height and weight when I was a baby! I'm COMPETITIVE! The only thing I can compare this to is being a really great high school athlete. You don't question your talent because you regularly pummel your competition. Then you get to college - still really good, you win lots of awards and everyone continues to tell you how great you are. Then you go off to the NFL/NBA and all of a sudden people are pummeling YOU. Then you start to worry about getting cut!

Anyhow....I slept in today, ate a few too many no-bake cookies and watched some good, quality TV. Overall I'm feeling better. I think the spiral has slowed and has almost stopped completely. Now it's time to pick myself up and get on with it.