As I walked into my room, I heard the rhythmic beat of my clock in the background while opening up my laptop. I flopped onto my bed, exhausted, just wanting to fall asleep, but then I started to feel a buzz from my phone from all the upcoming assignments due the next day. I began to think to myself, “This is too much, I don’t know where to start”. As I continued to think about the stress that I was feeling, I heard another buzz. Thinking it was another assignment due, I wearily opened my phone, but instead, it was my high school friends from back home checking up.
We called and talked about how much we missed each other. “I wish we were still in high school, it was so much easier.” I began to remember a time when my friends and I left school early to go to the beach and messed around like we were little kids. I felt happy and free, like there was no care in the world. The day was warm, and the water was cold, the kind of cold that made me feel alive.
The people I was with felt like a part of my home, and I felt at peace. I wish I were back in that moment, but as soon as the call ended, I knew I was back to reality. The weight on my shoulders was heavy, and I felt like I was racing against time. I started with my first physics homework problem, and I was confused. I didn’t know where to begin. I thought to myself, there are many doctors and dentists out there, it’s possible for me to do this. I began solving the first couple of problems, and I got some right and some wrong. As I sat on my twin-size bed, thinking to myself, it’s not the material that’s scaring me, it’s the idea of needing to be perfect. The need to remember why I needed to be perfect crept up against me. I said to myself, “I want to become the version of myself that I can be proud of”.
The next morning, I woke up with a pounding headache. “What a great way to start the day”, I thought while pressing the stop button on my alarm. I got out of my bed, put on the comfiest clothes I owned, and walked out the door, already thinking about the stress before the day had even begun. All I wanted was a perfect routine, perfect scores, and a seemingly perfect life. Happiness, something I’ve always had, felt very, very difficult to find in the first couple of weeks of my first quarter. Knowing myself, I knew I could bounce back, but how long will it take to stop chasing an unrealistic version of perfectionism and start choosing myself? A couple of months? A year? Or even two? I began to think about grad school, and how it seemed impossible. My mindset was focused on being someone who never makes mistakes, always looks happy, and never fails.
In high school, I felt “perfect”. The world felt as if it were mine, and I was in charge of my own life. This made me feel like I was in control all of the time. The little things, while focusing on the big picture, led me to happiness. The school clubs, the laughter with my friends, and even as simple as my classmates smiling at me across the hall. My first weeks of college taking weed-out classes weren’t so smooth. The professors needed to make the classes more difficult to make sure only the students who were dedicated stuck it out. In General Biology, we have a quiz every day on material we haven’t learned yet. Looking at this, at almost the end of the quarter, I see why it’s called a weed-out class. These quizzes overwhelmed me, especially since I didn’t get 100 percent every time. Later, this taught me that moving forward with my classes and assignments is what I needed to focus on. Looking back, I now see why failing is necessary. Without failing, succeeding isn’t possible. But in the moment I was in, I did not know that failing, having balance, and even missing a few questions on a test, is what I would come to call perfect.
If you were to ask what perfect meant, the first day of the quarter, I would tell you that it is a student who passes with straight A’s, takes every opportunity they get, and never struggles in a class. This is how I imagined every pre-dental student to be, and how I imagined I would be as well. Looking back at myself now, almost the end of my first quarter in college, I can admit that perfection is more than just a letter grade; it’s the courage and self-discipline to keep moving forward, whether it’s a choice or not. Whether I’m in class, at a pre-dental meeting, or even just hanging with my friends, I focus solely on feeling at peace knowing I did my best. And my best is what will take me to dental school, and my future goals. I hope to be successful in my future career while teaching other students how to own their definition of “perfect”.
— Maria Ibrahim, Class of 2028: Biomedical Sciences, Pre-Dental