You will never be ready, just show up and do your best.
2 min read - by Sophia Chen
When I was a kid, I absolutely did not want to grow up. Even if that had meant that I would never get rid of my braces and that I had to learn French vocabulary for the rest of my life, I would not have traded any of it. Well, I guess I did not really have a say in that matter. Sometimes, I still wonder how I suddenly became a doctor and now work in one of the world’s largest cancer centers. The first time I learned about the Impostor syndrome, I was fascinated that there actually was a name for my familiar feeling that I was not good enough for my job, that my achievements were inadequate and that my ideas were not worth others’ attention. So even if nobody is going to read this mediocre blog post written by a fraud who is not even a native speaker, at least it is going to be a reminder to myself that maybe, I have something to say and that it is okay to not have it all together.
When I first started working as a doctor, I definitely had a lot of self-doubt. There were expectations of my team, expectations of my superiors, and even worse, my own expectations. Also, there were expectations of the patients whom I could not tell that I was doing this whole thing for the first time in my life. In my second week, I was assigned to be the primary contact person for a patient with blood cancer who came to our ward to receive chemotherapy. I asked this patient about his past medical history, his current medication, and everything I remembered from med school. At the end of the conversation, the patient wanted to know: “So Dr. Chen, in your experience, what are the chances that I will be healed from my disease?” My experience? Haha. I do not remember what my exact answer was. All I know is that I probably did not screw up completely because that patient kept wanting to talk to me as his primary doctor even after he was discharged. Although I was not able to explain everything down to the last detail, the patient probably could feel that I was there for him, that I wanted to help, and that I was committed to what I was doing.
Today, three years later and a little bit wiser, I could tell you a lot about the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and differential diagnosis of this specific lymphoma that patient had. I could use words and abbreviations most people did not even know existed. But also, today, after having shed a lot of tears over patients that had passed away and over things I could have done better, I can also tell you that the learning process does not stop with graduating from med school and that being a doctor is about facing new challenges every day which could be a matter of life and death.
Now that we have covered the more dramatic part, I just want you (and myself) to remember: Yes, it is important to work hard. Yes, sometimes you have to be lucky. But take a step back and try to have more faith in yourself. Start before you are ready, you will figure it out. And if not, that is alright too, we are all still struggling.
Sophia is a physician from Germany who currently lives in New York and conducts research at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She looks like Mulan, identifies with Hermione Granger and always wanted to meet Peter Pan. Although she did not succeed in finding a way to never grow up, she learned some important lessons on the way, for instance that life is about more than getting straight As.