Mistakes Help You Get There - Curtis Weaver

I do my best learning when I mess up.  If there is one thing I’ll never forget, it’s the questions I get wrong on an exam.  I see a red X on a question, missing points, and comments about why what I put wasn’t correct and it stays with me.  What’s an erythrocyte?  I’ll never forget it’s a red blood cell after missing that question on my Cancer Genetic Counseling final.  What are the three conditions ACOG recommends all pregnant patients have carrier screening for?  After missing this question on my Intervention Skills in Genetic Counseling midterm, I’ll never forget they are spinal muscular atrophy, cystic fibrosis, and hemoglobinopathies.

It's counterintuitive because many of us have been groomed on academic perfection since we were in elementary school.  The media we consume always depicts characters who are academically perfect with 4.0s and graduate top of their class, having never gotten a question wrong before.  They’re the models many of us strive to emulate.  And we are also told from a young age that we need to have good grades in high school to get into college.  And then you need good grades in college to get into graduate school.  During these school years, students stress themselves out determined to outcompete their peers and be perfect, making no errors in the process.  Perfection is great and the expectation.  Mistakes are bad and mean you’ve failed.  But what happens once you make it the end of the line?

Don’t get me wrong—grades are still important in graduate school even if you hear me shout “grades don’t matter” several times a week.  Grades are the most objective way you can measure your understanding of a given topic or class.  Grades signal to your instructors where you are; grades signal to you where you are.  Grades give you something to aim for: how many of us have calculated how poorly we can do and still get an A or what score we will need to achieve on the final to get an A?  Grades can motivate you.

But what’s more important than grades is that you take the concepts that you learn and can apply them in real life.  After all, that’s what graduate school is all about.  In genetic counseling, it’s taking these complex biological and psychosocial topics and using them to help a patient understand genetic contributions to disease.  Getting things perfect the first time on a quiz or exam is great—but truly understanding the material is the real goal.  Mistakes help you get there and are an important part of the learning process.

Always aim to do the best you possibly can but give yourself space to mess up.  Failure, no matter how large or small, gives you opportunity to learn more than any A+, 10/10, or 100% ever could.  More than anything, I would say that being perfect is a really boring way to learn.  The final product of school isn’t grades, despite popular belief.  The final product of school is learning.  

Sharing this advice should not imply that this isn’t advice I also need, too.  When success and perfection have been drilled into you for your entire schooling career, it’s hard to step out of it and reframe.  It’s hard to see wrong answers and mistakes as anything else but “bad.”  But it is something I continue to work on.