- 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)