Lessons Learned: Perfection will drive you crazy

This is a rough lesson to learn, especially in the way that I unfortunately learned it. My scenario has to do with school and grades. If any of you are like me, you have had at least As and Bs all the way through high school, experienced your first C in college and if you are in grade school you are dealing with the traumatic realization that grades aren't everything.

When I went off to college, my dad asked me an important question, "Do you want to have fun or do you want to get good grades?" There was no both in the scenario. Strangely enough, this was my dad trying to encourage me to have fun and not worry about grades so much. Did I listen? Maybe a little bit. But I had the goal of pharmacy school in mind, which that requires good grades. So in reality grades were going to trump fun.

But I learned quickly what was important in terms of getting into pharmacy school. I became extremely active on campus. I had multiple leadership roles and I was part of many groups. I also began to volunteer regularity for experience.

My grades, of course, began to slip a bit. I ended up with a few Cs on my transcript but with acceptance letters from every pharmacy school I applied to (3 of them :)). How is this possible? Because I learned how important experience, connections and personality is when wanted to get into pharmacy school. Grades help but with a good test score (PCAT which I did fine on because my undergrad institution did a brilliant job at preparing me despite the bad grades) and impressive experience, you were a very competitive candidate for pharmacy school.

Fast forward to today. I am in my second year of pharmacy school (multiple people in my class did not even make it this far). I have multiple leadership positions on campus. I work twice a week. I am helping plan a huge event for the pharmacy school. AND I am trying to keep my grades up. This year is a lot more challenging than last year. The subject is harder, but the work load in the same.

I've learned that I have to balance my studies and my mental health. I could spend my entire day studying, get less than 5 hours of sleep and not be part of any organizations on campus. But that would cause my mental health to slip. I know my body's requirements to stay healthy. Good sleep is one of them. And being part of different organizations on campus make me happy. Studying all the time does not make me happy. So what I am doing is for my own good?

So I need (everyone really) to accept my limitations and realize that just because I don't have a 4.0 doesn't mean I am not going to get a job in the future. Experience is just as important as grades. I need to try my hardest and accept myself.

Its a rough lesson to learn.

Have you had an experience similar to this?

-Katie

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