I heard something the other day along the lines of how ‘crazy it is when you learn everything’s being run by people you went to high school with’.
And like, at the end of the day, that’s all it is.
We sometimes acts like people are practically deities – like CEOs, politicians, whatever, like they’re some kind of special upper echelon as thought they’re a chosen person meant to be there, but the more I get older and meet more people at higher positions, it’s like we’re literally all just people who have embarrassing stories of our youth (or sometimes even our yesterday).
And I saw a tik tok (I know, I know always a tik tok haha) from @javifromtiktok where he talks about how normal it is to fail at things while on the road to becoming a doctor.
And when I watch Tik Toks from doctors who get sidetracked on their path, or have to pull up low GPAs in undergrad by getting MPH or something first in order to get into med school, or people who don’t pass exams a few times – they often make their story so inspiring and cool – which they should!
And then at the end of the day, the people cutting us open are people who got a 3.18 in undergrad (the specificity is ’cause I saw that in a tik tok doctor’s live, about what they got in undergrad, and things they did to make up for it).
And there’s nothing wrong with that! I’d be happy to have my life saved or enhanced by a doctor who did poorly in undergrad as long as they know what they’re doing now.
But I guess one thing I just find kind of funny is I’ve heard SO many “redemption arcs” at this point, I’m kinda wondering how many people even have the “normal arc” to begin with. How many people have just a linear path.
I think probably more people have times filled with struggle than not. And more people have an imperfect life record (not just school, but life) than not.
And I wonder if we should just kinda… this is a silly thing to say, but… normalize being normal.
And maybe that’s what it is when everyone is telling the stories of their imperfections. Maybe that is indeed what’s happening right in front of my face.
And yeah, I’m feeling it. Everybody’s a normie to some extent – even exceptional people are still humans (and definitely have some foibles, I’m sure).