15 years ago this summer, I was sitting in a dreaded Organic
Chemistry class – a class where good GPAs went to die. Not only is O-Chem a
tough class anyway, but I was taking it over the summer, which meant a full
year of information would be crammed into ten weeks. We had two hours of
lecture every day and five hour labs every other day. Then there was the icing
on the cake, that summer the course was being taught by one of the WWAMI (University
of Washington Medical School cooperative with University of Alaska) Professors.
We were going to have a year-long Med School Chemistry course machine gunned at
us in two months.
I wasn’t too worried because all forty of us in the class would
be in the same boat. We all had the same steep hill to ascend and I knew if I
could out-climb all of them, my perfect GPA would survive. Also, the professor didn’t
adhere to posted office hours and rarely answered questions in class. He would
give you the information once and then you were on your own. Although this was going
to make it even harder, I learned well on my own so this should work to my
advantage in outpacing the class.
We quickly arrived at our first exam date and it wasn’t pretty.
It was multiple choice (which a chemistry test should never be) and the
questions felt like they were designed more to trick us than test our mastery
of the material. No matter, we were all playing with the same cards. A week
later I got my score back – 88%. While I wasn’t satisfied with the score, I was
relieved when he posted the spread of the grades: the class average was in the
60s with a low in the 40s, maybe even a high 30. My 88% was the highest score
on that exam. I sat back and waited for him to explain how he was going to
curve the grades but that discussion never happened. Surely my 88, being the
top score, would still warrant an A?
After several attempts, I finally tracked down our professor
at his office and sought to clarify the issue of the curve. He plainly stated there
would be no curve. Regardless of the class average, an A would be 90% or
higher. No exceptions. I challenged him on this and suggested perhaps the test
itself was the issue if no student in forty could manage a 90. He responded
back with no minced words and his own theory that our class was just dumb and
lazy. I knew for a fact this was not the case as I had studied with many of my
classmates in previous semesters (no fewer than three are now physicians) but
his assessment of my class got my blood boiling immediately. Before I could
respond back with some ill-advised words from a hotshot 22 year old’s brain, he
said something that stopped me dead in my tracks, “Sometimes in life you will
find that good enough is not good enough. Where you are hoping to go, you must
be excellent.”
Thankfully, I had nothing to say. I quietly turned around
and walked out of his office. I was still steaming with anger and frustration
but I could not get those words out of my head. He pegged me. I had been shooting
for “good enough” and metering my efforts based on the relative performance of
those around me rather than what I was capable of producing. I was still
working hard, I put in a tremendous amount of time and energy preparing for
that first exam, but my mindset was not to do my absolute best. I was just
trying to outpace my fellow students. I was aiming for “good enough.”
Our society is constantly seeking bare minimums. “What is
the least amount of effort I can put in and not get fired? How short can I cut
my workouts and still lose weight? How many hours can I spend on Facebook and
still get promoted? What is the minimum I can do … and still be good enough?”
The problem with “good enough” is you won’t know if the effort you spent really
was good enough until it’s too late. If you give all you have and still come up
short, you can still hold your head up high knowing you did all you could. “Good
enough” is the seed of regret and disappointment.
“Where you are hoping to go, you will need to be excellent.”
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