- Growing up with Tourette syndrome
in a rough part of Los Angeles
and with immigrant parents who didn't have much
in the way of finances or connections,
I learned early on that nothing would be handed to me.
I want to go to a good school for college,
so I taught myself everything I needed to know
about the admissions process.
When I founded Shemmassian,
all I knew was how to help students like you.
I didn't know anything about setting up a website,
recording YouTube videos, running payroll,
or anything like that.
But I knew that I had to learn and that I could learn,
so I did.
Rather than make excuses, I owned my actions.
Let me run a few scenarios by you.
All I want you to do is imagine how you'd react
if you heard any of the following narratives from someone.
Imagine you're a medical school admissions committee member
and someone essentially says,
"I know my MCAT score isn't great,
but I'm just not a good test taker."
Imagine it's your birthday and your best friend shows up
an hour late to your party and says,
"I know I'm late, but I haven't been sleeping well,
so I took a nap and I think my phone must be going bad
because my alarm was so quiet, I slept right through it."
Imagine you're a tutor for a college chemistry class,
and one of your students
doesn't show up to their appointment.
They email you and say,
"I couldn't come to my appointment
because I was too upset about the grade professor Smith
gave me on the midterm
and I couldn't sit through a tutoring session."
I just think the grading is unfair anyways,
so I'm going to drop the class.
In any of these circumstances, how would you react?
You're probably going to roll your eyes at least once, yes.
Maybe a bit irritated, frustrated, doubtful, puzzled.
Even if you're the kindest,
most patient empathic and unassuming person in the world,
with endless reserves of second, third, and fourth chances.
You know that excuses aren't going to do anything for you
in the long run.
For example, you're not going to be able to change
this person's MCAT score for them.
You're not going to make up the hour your friend
missed at your party,
or the time you lost waiting for someone to show up
to a tutoring session they bailed on.
So the moral of the story is,
the excuse is just as useless to you,
the recipient of the excuse
as it is to the creator of the excuse.
In other words, there is no use for an excuse.
(dramatic music)
In this video,
we're going to discuss why it's critical
to stop making excuses and own your actions.
This advice applies to all aspects of life,
including your academics, extracurriculars,
and the admissions process.
Before we continue, I'd really appreciate it
if you would hit that like button.
If you don't, I'll make excuses
about why this video didn't reach more people.
Just getting, sorta.
All right, why am I talking about excuses?
Believe it or not,
excuses can often play a huge part
in the medical school admissions process.
Admissions committees can see applicants
clinging to them like baby blankets.
And it's understandable,
the medical school admissions process is grueling.
The competition is getting more and more elite,
pressuring us to try and explain away
any flaws in our armor.
But rather than recognize the competition
for what it is and develop
into the strongest possible applicant,
we make excuses.
We even have other words for excuses,
like context or explanation,
anything to deny that we're making excuses, I get it.
You want to anticipate any perceived flaw or weakness
and explain why it's not your fault,
why it's not going to happen again
and why it's just a strange fluke.
But trying to convince others
and ourselves of certain narratives,
only hurts you in the long run.
It's not going to do you any favors.
So it's time to leave your excuses behind
and take control of the medical school admissions process.
Obviously, you know what an excuse is,
but why do you use them?
Excuses are meant to be safety nets,
but they're ineffective ones.
We think they're going to be there to offset the damage
of a moment of weakness,
a time when something didn't quite go to plan,
but instead excuses magnify any inability
we have to be self aware and willing to grow.
Willing to be accountable and willing to change.
Excuses can also turn into habits
that are incredibly hard to break.
For instance, if you're convinced
that you're a bad standardized test taker,
you might consciously or subconsciously
put in less effort or simply go into the MCAT
with a defeatist mentality.
When your score is lower than you'd hoped, you think,
"See, I knew it."
When we start making excuses,
it's easy to keep making them
and incredibly difficult to stop.
And the thing is, at the end of the day,
you really don't need them.
When we make them we're not drawing attention
to any kind of solution.
Instead, we're drawing attention
to why we're making the excuse in the first place.
And why do we make excuses?
Fear, uncertainty, a dangerous cycle of self comparison
and belief of our own lack.
And why are these logics habits or characteristics
you wanna magnify?
Instead, it's important to embark on the path
to medical school,
embracing your own sense of control and power.
You have the ability to tell your own story completely,
to control your own story.
This too can come in different shapes and sizes.
As tried as it may sound,
the difference between internal and external
loci of control,
is akin to saying you control your educational path
for someone else.
It's important to claim your agency here
and be accountable to both your success and your mishaps.
If you get a bad grade on a test
and you have an external locus of control,
you might say something like,
that test was unfairly difficult.
An internal locus of control means saying,
I wish I'd studied harder, I can do better next time.
Now, again, this can seem like a small
and isolated incident,
after all, every now and then,
we do just wanna say,
Hey, that was an unfairly difficult test.
Maybe you didn't know it was,
but regardless of whether it was or wasn't,
if we continuously blame external sources
for our own misfortune,
we take control out of our own hands,
we also feel helpless.
And if we blame others for our mishaps,
we can no longer take responsibility
for our successes either.
It's like we're saying nothing is up to us.
It's important to remain self-aware throughout
our entire academic journey,
so that we can hold ourselves to higher academic standards,
so that we can be our own internal watchdogs,
telling ourselves to study harder for the next test,
or start writing our paper earlier,
or put in the extra hours
to cultivate a better mentorship with our professor.
Control your own story, control your own process.
This is where the focus towards excellence begins.
Any energy you spend blaming someone else for a mistake
or a failure,
is time you take away from being accountable enough
to say, you need to sit down to do the work
to improve yourself, which is something you can control.
Think AAA, for a moment with me.
No, not the car service.
It's my handy little acronym
for accountability affects action.
Like the car service, using this AAA, as a kind of mantra,
can get you out of some trouble.
Our ability versus inability to be accountable
to our role in our success versus mishaps,
can play a huge role in our action versus inaction
and therefore our ability to succeed.
We lose the motivation to act,
to succeed if we think the world is against us.
When we maintain an awareness
of our own internal agency however,
we maintain a sense of self-determination,
which you have to have in order to achieve something.
For instance, don't make the admissions process
more of an uphill battle than it has to be,
you are an authority on yourself.
You know your history,
and this history will include moments of trial and error.
It all works, so tell us who you are,
how you are unique and who you will be in the next phase
of your education.
And at the end of the day,
this is what medical schools want to know.
You will stall quickly
if you're not taking continuous self-inventory.
No, we don't want to,
or like to scrutinize everything we do
and this isn't necessary all the time.
But it is necessary if we've gotten something wrong
and we want to write it.
When you find yourself turning to a logic
that embraces excuses,
whether you're making these excuses to yourself
or to others,
try to remind yourself to push for why.
By that I mean, channel your inner five-year-old.
Ever hear how they sometimes ask an endless
amount of why questions?
Why do fish breathe under water?
But why do they have gills?
But why do they like it underwater?
But why can't I live underwater with them?
But why can't I have gills too?
This line of questioning can be relentless,
we can also make it productive.
We can make it work for us.
When you find yourself making an excuse,
ask that excuse why and keep asking.
Why did I get a C plus on the test?
Why was it too hard?
Why did I find the chemistry material too hard, et cetera.
Keep probing, keep taking self-inventory
so you are holding yourself accountable
and pushing yourself to be better.
Again be your own watchdog,
interrogate any argument you're trying to make
that talks you out of putting in the work
to fix something,
because there's always something you can do.
When we make excuses over and over again,
we run the risk of starting to internalize them.
And this can turn our lives
into a kind of fun house mirror version of reality,
in which our own personal responsibility
and sense of control is distorted
and constantly fluctuating.
And in the strict context of the admissions process,
this only further distances those around us
from getting to the bottom of who we are
and how we've handled the scenarios we're excusing.
It's always better to be confident in who we are,
as imperfect as that may seem on the surface.
Taking control of your own narrative
is the start of establishing a successful one,
and there's no room for excuses in this.
Speaking of no excuses,
take a second to hit the like button and subscribe,
so you don't miss out on new videos.
Also leave a note in the comments section
about an excuse you want to stop making,
or perhaps the worst excuse you've heard from someone else,
we'll decide if it's a good one.
Spoiler alert, it's probably not.
All right, see you next time.
(upbeat music)