Power pose: “fake it until you make it”
Purpose posture: “know it until you show it”
As a black woman in medicine, I’ve been told more times than I can count why or how I will not make it. The discouragement comes from many sources. From freshman orientation where the Biology chair announced to a room of nearly 200 excited new bio majors that “about FOUR of you will actually make it to medical school. The rest of you should start considering something else”. To the BioChem professor (at the neighboring all male college) who smugly told me on the first day, “no GIRL has ever passed my class”. To the dean in med school who spent more time trying to get me to focus on a rank list plan B than optimizing my plan A.
I get asked a lot about how to succeed in medicine. The single most important factor for success in medicine, and in life, is believing that you can. The years of studying medicine are long and hard. The tests feel endless, and the expectations that others have of you increase with every day.
But when you believe, when you truly know that you have a calling to do the work that you do, when you know that people who haven’t even been birthed yet are literally depending on you walking in your purpose, you persist in spite of it all.
If you really start to believe it, you will repurpose discouragement and doubt as fuel for your fire, letting motivation burn fresh and new with every slight.
To the biology chair, I said in front of my Spelman sisters, “Thank you for the stats, but I think what we want to know is what we have to do to be in that FOUR”. To the BioChem professor, I made the highest grade on his first test and became the first girl to pass his class.
To the dean in med school, I ranked at my number one choice for OBGYN residency and even continue my training today at a highly competitive fellowship program.
This isn’t a power pose, this is my purpose posture. I’ve known well before my God showed you.
Now, tell me one more time what I “can’t do.”
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