about butterflies.
So, about nerves/nervousness going into the interview—unless you are the Buddha himself, or some super zen meditation master, you are going to have some nerves going into it. Just accept that.
But in order to crush some of those butterflies wrecking havoc in the stomach, I have what I basically call my war ritual, which I also did before the MCAT, and other important events. It involves a lot of loud dance music, me yelling and doing horrible dance moves in my car, and just generally getting myself pumped, telling myself that I’m awesome, that I’m going to do great, and I don’t even need to sweat it because I’m supercool.
And that’s it. Despite many insecurities and fears, I know who I am and I know that, if given the opportunity, I will be a good doctor. I know why I want to be a doctor and why it is important to me. It also helps that I’m at ease talking with other people, even if they are strangers. One key element of my strategy, so to speak, is to listen and observe carefully the person I’m talking to—they can reveal a lot about themselves in just a few short sentences or in pictures on a wall. If I can draw those things out, and find parallels in my own experience to talk to them about, I find it is much easier to relate to others.
The whole point of an interview is so that the medical school admissions board can get to know you as a person, and to figure out if you would make a good doctor. So if you don’t know yourself, it is going to make that task infinitely harder, because you are not going to know what to tell them, especially when those “unexpected” or wild card questions come up. So my best advice is to figure out who you are, at least to some certain, basic extent. Then you don’t really need to be afraid of any question.
