- I want you to imagine a world in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr got a C in public speaking. Imagine a world in which Michael Jordan was cut from his high
school basketball team. Imagine a world in which Van Gogh sold only one painting while he was alive. In which Einstein failed
his school entrance exam, in which Oprah was fired
from her first TV job, JK Rowling was rejected
by multiple publishers, and JZ couldn't find a record company to sign him and had to sell his CD out of the trunk of his car. Thing is, it's all true. Now, does it change the fact that we love to watch Michael Jordan highlights? That the "I Have a
Dream" speech is arguably the greatest speech ever written? That almost everyone has
read a "Harry Potter" book or watch one of the movies? Random fact about me, I've only read the first chapter of the first "Harry Potter" book, but I've watched all the movies. Oh, and I took a quiz earlier today on which Hogwarts House I would belong to, turns out I'm a Gryffindor. I'm Dr. Shemmassian, medical
school admissions expert at Shemmassian Academic Consulting. In this video, I wanna discuss something we rarely talk about, failure. Your greatest challenge, don't run. I know, it's a bummer to have to talk about a time you failed. After all, failures are unpleasant. They have negative connotations and are often used to assert a script that identifies us as weak
or lacking in some way. So what do we do then during a med school admissions interview, when we're asked to not just consider a failure, but to talk about a failure in depth. To dig deep into that failure. Almost like pressing
down on a fresh bruise for five minutes straight. What is the use of the prompt, "Tell me about a time you failed," and how do we answer without raising a red
flag for our interviewer that can take us out of the running for a spot in a program? We're going to discuss how we can rewrite the script for this interview question. Successfully strategizing
how we can talk about a time we failed without wanting to run for the hills. You don't have to be
Oprah in your interview, but there is a way to turn yourself into more than the moment you got something wrong. Before we get into it, I have one request. Hit that Like button,
because it would turn blue and help others find this video. When approaching this interview question, it's going to be important to rewrite the script for yourself first. Set aside all of the negative connotations that go along with words like failure. It's incredibly important to answer the question honestly. Don't act as though you've never failed or encountered difficulty. You might remember that scene in the "Dark Knight Rises" when, spoiler alert, Bruce Wayne or Batman is trying to escape Bane's prison by making that incredible,
kind of impossible leap from ledge to ledge. It's an almost five minute montage and the actual escape only
lasts like 10 seconds. Most of the scene shows
Bruce falling over and over contemplating the darkness in his cell, doing a bunch of sit-ups. And the guy practically has a broken back in between these attempts. Essentially, the takeaway here is that it's the failure people are interested in. It doesn't make us see Bruce as anything less than Batman. It shows us what he's had to fight for, corny as it sounds. If you act like you've made
every single impossible leap, won every battle, and overcome every
obstacle with no problem, you're going to quickly
irritate your interviewer and come across as
arrogant or disingenuous. I mean, you can't be
better than Batman, right? At the same time, don't tell yourself that discussing a failure means you're discussing your inadequacy. Instead, you can reframe
this as an opportunity to tell a story about a time you've grown. Interestingly enough,
etymologically speaking, failure proceeds from the old French for "non-occurrence" or
a cessation of supply. Now, that still isn't exactly great, but if we embrace the roots of the word, it might tell us a little bit about how failure can meet not just the time where we messed up enormously or got
something incredibly wrong, sometimes it just represents a time when we couldn't do something or when we couldn't get something right. When we couldn't jump
from point A to point B. And this happens to all of us, even incredibly successful doctors. So remind yourself why interviewers are asking this question. No, they don't wanna embarrass you. No, they don't wanna identify the one secret reason they can use to give you your rejection letter. Essentially, they wanna get a sense of how resilient you are. If you have the capacity
to learn from mistakes, to adapt, evolve, grow. The openness to learn and do better has to provide the
foundation of your response to this question. This is also an opportunity for you to really define failure
on your own terms. And this can say so
much about who you are. Failure is subjective. Some people look at
failure as an inability to meet a benchmark at work or school, whereas others view it more holistically and internally calibrated. Admissions officers will get a sense of who you are based on
what failure means to you and therefore more indirectly,
what success means to you. In other words, whether
you realize it or not, it'll help offer some
insight into your own values. Let's take a look at this
successful interviewee's response to see exactly where and how
they're getting it right. "While volunteering at
a local free clinic, I frequently work with
patients with low income and who are learning English as a second language. It was my job to direct them to affordable healthcare resources following their appointments. After one appointment, a particularly upset
patient came to my desk wanting to talk about their appointment. And from what I could tell,
their recent diagnosis with rheumatoid arthritis. I was a new volunteer and the office was extremely busy, and so I stuck to a script and directed them to some brochures. I could see that they
didn't fully understand what I was communicating to them. And even more so, that they were upset. Still, I was multi-tasking and by the time I returned
to my desk, they left. This interaction bothered
me the rest of the day, and I felt like a huge failure because I didn't offer the patient the individualized support
and empathy they needed. Even though I wasn't their doctor, part of working in healthcare is knowing that despite the rush, you need to always put your patient first. If you can't provide answers to them, you should help them
hunt those answers down. The next time the patient came in, I made sure to pull them aside when they were leaving. I apologized for rushing
through the resources available to them,
explaining that I was new and adapting to my role. I then checked to see how they were doing and if they had any lingering questions that I might be able
to help them look into, or that I might be able
to ask their doctor about. Being able to revisit the
issue with this patient taught me it's important to apologize and show accountability no matter how much time has passed. And to always seek the opportunity to grow and right a wrong. At the same time, it's also taught me, I need to get better at multitasking, as this was part of the reason I felt too overwhelmed to sit down and offer them more individualized support in the first place." This answer is successful because it strikes a good
balance of context and narrative without avoiding a clear
answer and valid failure, the speaker is being accountable to their own failure and even offering some insight into what healthcare means to them. But at the same time, they're
giving us some insight into why they might've made this error. They've also clearly
identified why it was an error that meant something to them. It directly undermined
their own valuing of empathy and individualized support. And finally, they've
really been able to reframe their response by circling back to the way they tried
to fix their mistake, finishing up by giving
us a light bulb moment or a revelation they had, a lesson they learned that it will shape them in the long run. It's specific, succinct, accountable, and demonstrates a good arc of growth. Alright, now it's your turn. How can you develop your own response? Keep a couple of key things in mind. First, keep scale in mind. Be careful not to go too big or too small. Don't talk about a time
you cheated on a test but also don't talk about
a time that you failed to show up to your friend's
surprise birthday party on time or a time you
failed your English essay. You want to choose examples that will have an opportunity
to get to a moral, a lesson, or skill, or value
you learned as a result. If you talk about cheating on a test, this could raise a ton of red flags. You're going way too big. If you talk about the
time you failed a paper or didn't show up to a party on time, there is much to demonstrate by a way of growth here either. Everybody fails papers. Everybody shows up late from time to time. So it's not especially unique. And a solution to these failures is to be more organized with your time, to study harder. These aren't the kind of
in-depth unique morals and moments of growth that interviewers wanna hear about. And it limits the narrative
detail you can go into. If you do have a longer,
more compelling story, you can tell that goes
along with these failures, there can be exceptions. But it's better to start with a failure that feels more substantive rather than try to
convince your interviewer, why the failure you selected should count as a failure. You wanna be specific in your answer. But specificity doesn't mean you have to give a 10
minute speech, avoid this. You wanna keep your response concise. One huge common mistake, that's easy to make is to over contextualize your response. This means talking on and on about the job you were doing at the time, the things you were thinking about, the responsibilities you had, et cetera, before you ever get to the main answer. Giving too much context can not only trip you up by
making you forget the question, but it can also look like you're avoiding the question altogether. It's better to confidently
tackle it head-on. So remind yourself not to ramble. This can be easy to do,
especially when facing a question that makes us nervous. Which are usually those questions that ask us to consider
our own vulnerabilities. Sometimes in the face of these questions we can avoid answering at
first by rambling context or general personality traits or philosophical musings about failure before applying the lens on ourselves. Know your question, remind yourself of the question, and jump right into your answer. Again, this has to do with not getting caught up in
negative connotations. Don't let your story become too negative, a testament to all the
things you've gotten wrong. Balance your answer with the positives. The ways you've learned something new and grown. At the same time, always be accountable to your role in the mistakes you've made. Don't blame others for your circumstances, don't make excuses for yourself, don't act as though you
fully solve your problems and are now in a place where
you're never gonna fail again. As long as you continue to fall back on the idea of growth being
ongoing and continuous, you're gonna come across
as a mature, thoughtful, and considerate candidate. This is definitely a question
you should brainstorm ahead of time so that you're
not thinking on the spot. No, you don't wanna stick
strictly to a script, but you do wanna address every important part of the question. Think about diagramming
the question a bit. You wanna make sure you're giving context, a reason why your failure was a failure, some self-reflection, and some insight into how
you've addressed the problem and worked to grow. Because there are multiple
highlights you need to hit. It's useful to come up with
that narrative ahead of time. That way you can develop a roadmap that will help make sure you're
giving a complete answer. So, how can you pick the right narrative? Think first about experiences you've had that have demonstrated growth. This has really what these questions are trying to get to the bottom of. If you can't isolate what you learned or where you began to change, that's probably a red flag that that failure doesn't
offer a rich enough story to have a productive conversation. For generating possible
responses to this question, why not hit the literal
drawing board and diagram some possible responses. Set a timer for yourself, one minute and grab a blank sheet of paper and something to write with. For that minute, list out
the following information: The situation you're in i.e the context. Is this context personal,
academic, work-related? How you failed in this context, and why you consider this a failure. Very clearly identify this and always make sure you do this so that your interviewer isn't left guessing a reason as to why you chose this anecdote. The result. How did things turn out? Did you lose your job? Did you have a phase
of personal discovery? Did you fail an assignment in school? The lesson you learned. Again, this can be an ongoing lesson, you're still trying to navigate. Don't pressure yourself to
over-resolve your story, or your response can begin to feel a bit overly composed, stiff,
and even a little naive. Try to repeat the cycle five times for a total of five minutes
in five different scenarios. At the end of those five minutes, examine whether or not
any of these situations were difficult for you to write about. In other words, could you simply not think
of something you learned? Was it hard to identify the
concrete way you failed? Is there a one sheet of paper that has more writing on it than another? More detail? Choose the paper that has
the richest narrative, the most specific detail,
and the best sense of scale when it comes to demonstrating positive growth and self-awareness. Then you have all the tools to answer your question come interview day. Ultimately, when you're sitting down to get ready for this question, remind yourself that you're not alone in having experienced
difficulty, failure, or obstacle. Remember Batman in prison, Harry Potter in the rejection pile, Oprah polishing her resume. Your failure in essence is
not what makes you unique. And when interviewers asked you about this really, the failure is the least interesting
part of the question. The best information
comes in the discussion of what happened after, how you responded, how you critically engaged and changed your course of action. Having failed doesn't make you a failure. And this is something you need to remind yourself
of over and over again. Failure leads to growth, and that's what interviewers
love to hear about. Moving forward, don't fail
to hit that Like button. Notice what I did there? Sorry about that. But do hit the Like button and subscribe so you can get more advice on the med school admissions process and maybe even more Batman references. We'd also love to hear from you. Here's a fun challenge. See if you can summarize a time you failed in no more than three words. And then if you're feeling brave, drop it in the comment section below. Remember no judgment. Thanks for tuning in, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)
