Like nearly every other veterinary student, I have been gifted with a Type-A personality. There are great benefits to this: self-control, motivation, and high achievement. These have certainly attributed to my successes thus far and are likely what got me into vet school. However, many traits can become toxic and damaging if they are left unchecked. One of the most shackling traits for me has been perfectionism. It has led me to be incredibly unkind to myself and others, it has fooled me into isolation, it has manifested as cruel impatience, and it has led to an incredibly fragile foundation in which I built my identity.    

What does perfectionism look like in my life? It is the sinking feeling in my stomach when I get 100% on an exam because failure is the only direction I can go from there. It is the inability to try something new because the thought of being anything but great is crippling. It is giving up when I miss my goal on the first try and diving into a deep depression knowing that I am unlovable. It is the monster that robs me of feeling any sense of accomplishment because greatness is the bare minimum of what is expected. It’s like heroin to me. It takes all of my joy, yet gets me to believe that it is the only thing keeping me afloat. No matter how much I fail and no matter how unlovable I am, perfectionism is the one that will never leave my side. Isn’t that sick?

I’ve been working on embracing the idea of “good enough”. Does that send a chill down your spine like it does mine? It makes me want to crawl out of my skin. So obviously a big emphasis on *working on*. I don’t even know what good enough looks like to be honest because all I’ve known is good enough equals perfect and nothing less. Science is not my usual place to go for wisdom, but this time was an exception. I found it in p values. Ya know the P value of 0.05 in research that indicates whether data is significant or not? It comes from something called natural error, aka error that is out of our control, and it is an accepted industry standard.

So, science is telling me it is virtually impossible to be perfect. This was a wild realization for me. And also, a little bit of a relief. If research, the seemingly most controlled environments in the world, have accepted non-perfection as an industry standard, why the heck have I felt it reasonable to hold a standard of perfection for myself? I am a human being with ever-changing thoughts, needs, biochemistry, feelings and I am powerless over my ever-changing environment on top of that.  

I spent a lot of time reflecting on this phenomenon. How much stress and time and joy have I foregone trying to close that 0.05? And how much does that 0.05 even matter? The answer is I have wasted a lot of cortisol and likely a lot of years of my life (past and future) to close a gap that is basically just a figment of my imagination. Very few people notice and even less care. In fact, I may be the only one who cares. Does any of this truly make me better at what I am doing or would “good enough” actually have been best? Oof.

I decided to put my newfound wisdom into practice this semester. I have chosen to get quite involved in things outside of academics. Arguably, I may have taken a bigger bite than I am able chew. But I believe that I can do just about anything for 3-4 months assuming I can see a sign of respite, which I can. To keep my sanity in this chaos, I have been forced to change my expectations. Until this moment actually, I have been calling it “lowering my expectations”. I am just realizing how degrading this message is subliminally. I am *adjusting* my expectations to fit my current reality. I have too many commitments to be the best at everything, but that doesn’t mean my *good* isn’t enough. In most cases, it is.

This isn’t my most graceful journey. In fact, I have a hard time seeing any grace in it at times. When I get hit with my “good enough” my heart still drops, my head still gets foggy, and my ears are still deafened with the ring of failure. I guess that means there is lots of room for growth. Do you know what lots of room for growth means? That I may be sitting in failure right now. And, ironically, this could be the most contenting piece of it. Perfectionism (and its success) is shackling, fragile, fleeting. But failure? It’s an opportunity to restart with nothing to lose.

And that just might contain the most freedom of all. ~Em