Failures

I met with the women's MD-PhD committee yesterday to talk about events we'll be planning over the next academic year. Many of the events we had last year were very successful:

- Mixer with prospective students
- Panel about mentorship
- A couple of happy hours
- A book talk

There was interest in having a panel discussion with some woman faculty members who are physician scientists now.

But what would we have them talk about?

The usual ideas were thrown out regarding work-life balance and their stories about how they've become successful. A general advice session. (And I gotta say, many of us are tired of hearing the same advice re work-life balance: i.e. there is no convenient time to have a baby and have lots of family support nearby +/- a good nanny. Snooze.....)

Then someone mentioned failures. "Let's have them talk about times when they have failed at something, or when times were difficult and they overcame," someone suggested. I wish I remembered who because it was a brilliant idea.

See, we're all trained to come up with these beautifully crafted narratives of how we got where we are today that make it seem like our life courses were charted out perfectly from the day we were born to the day we got tenure. But the truth is (with a few nauseating exceptions) it's all total BULLSHIT.

For instance: me. My own bullshit beautifully crafted narrative goes as follows:
Old MD Girl majored in Sociology and graduated with honors from the University of Chicago. She worked with very important mentor on her senior thesis on predictors of voluntarism in hospices, and then took a job at a consulting firm that specialized in sales and marketing consulting for pharmaceutical companies after she graduated from college. It was at this time that she discovered that she loved working with data. Her next job at an industrial supply company taught her to manage supply chain operations, and she decided that she wanted to apply the principles she had learned working in the warehouse to health services research. Her next job, managing the health services research projects of two physicians back at the University of Chicago convinced her that the best way to make a real impact in the field was to pursue an MD-PhD in Epidmiology, so she completed a post-bac while working full time, and was admitted to medical school. She decided to focus her dissertation on the problems associated with inpatient patients flows through ICUs, rationing, and Dr-patient communication.

The reality is more like this:
OMDG had no idea what to do with her life during college. After reading an article in Newsweek on patient non-compliance the summer before her 4th year of college (and watching a lot of the X-files and being fascinated by Agent Scully), she decided to reconsider this whole med school thing and do a senior thesis on medical sociology. She was assigned her thesis mentor because the head of the sociology department thought she was cute, and that this very important dr would enjoy working with her because of that. The very important dr made her feel like she was the stupidest person on the planet and she quickly became disenchanted with the project quickly (also, it was on a topic she found boring at the time).

Because she had no idea what she was going to do with her life, she decided to get a job at a consulting firm. She knew the moment she started that she was going to hate it. PLUS, she realized half way through that she really wanted to do more analytical work. When she requested this, she was told that as a sociology major, she wasn't smart enough to do it. She thought about grad school but was too chicken to pursue it, and started dating a boat anchor who verbally abused her for the next three years.

Then (because she was desperate to get out of the consulting job) she got a job at the industrial supply company from hell. It was ok for a little while. She learned about supply chain operations and stuff. But again she was passed over for a more analytical position because, as a sociology major, she "wasn't smart enough" to do it. She eventually got promoted to the warehouse, and after a year of not touching a computer, realized she was getting stupider and stupider, and that she was losing any transferable skills she had developed over the past 3 years. She was probably also clinically depressed at this time. Eventually she got fired (pretty common for management candidates at that company), which FINALLY gave her the push she needed to think about how to go back to grad school.

She got the research job totally because of the very important dr who thought she was stupid (she name dropped him on her cover letter and it turned out he had previously worked with the drs she got the job with). She visited the mentors she had from undergrad (the very important dr who thought she was stupid thought med school was a great idea until he found out how old she was -- then he told her it was a bad idea, and the other one tried to get in her pants), and started a post bacc TENTATIVELY thinking med school might be a good idea. Her projects went awesome, and she got good grades and MCAT scores. Dumped the bad bf, met Luca, and applied EVERYWHERE since she had no idea what programs might accept someone like her. Somehow she got in where she is now (she really can't believe it sometimes). Med school's gone well, as has the PhD so far. Go figure. She does research on ICUs because she really can't stand outpatient medicine.

But of course this isn't the perfectly manicured narrative I tell most people because people then think, "She got FIRED?? She didn't know what she wanted to DO with her life? My goodness, what is wrong with her. How unfocused. We will not be hiring/admitting/giving $$ to this person. How could we? She has FAILED before in life." And it's interesting, since most of the kids in my program have gone straight through from college, I really do wonder whether any of them HAVE actually even struggled (much less failed) with anything before in their lives. I've certainly never heard a comparable failure narrative from any of them, and when I tell snippets of my failure narrative, classmates look at me like I'm pond scum....

So in any event, I'm really looking forward to the failure panel. I am curious about what I will hear.

Dear readers, do any of you have a compelling failure narrative? Do tell.