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“I’m not smart enough” Putting an End to Negative Self-Talk
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Hi, everyone, welcome to MedKinza, your go to source for bite sized content in becoming future doctors.
I'm your host at Kinza Hussein and I'm a second year medical student and YouTube with 20K subscribers helping students navigate the ins and outs of one of the most competitive careers. So today we are going to be talking about insecurity and not feeling good enough either in the creative space or in medical school. And this topic is really just kind of coming from me and my personal feelings about being in the creative space while being in medical school and feelings of insecurity that come with that and feelings of not being good enough and not being smart enough.
So we are going to talk about that mostly, maybe just so I can kind of share that with you guys and get it off my chest, but also talk about why these feelings are just crippling and they're not adding any value to our lives.They only hold us back rather than allowing us to grow into better versions of ourselves.
So I am kind of talking to myself today with this podcast while I also share with you some thoughts I've had on this. Growing up, I was never a straight-A student and education was very important in my household. So my mom and my dad really valued education. They are Pakistani parents that came over from Pakistan to get their education here for college and their masters, and they wanted to have their kids here to give them the best life possible. If I have any Asian listeners listening to this right now, you guys know the whole deal. So education was just very important under our roof and it was important to get good grades. But throughout I remember elementary years, I can't really say when my grades were, but once medical, once sorry middle school started, things became more defined as to our grading system was A, B, C, D, and I was a B student and once high school started, things got harder. And my freshman year is when I got my first C or multiple C's, I got I remember I got a C in geometry and Spanish and there must have been one other. Oh, physics. No, not physics. Physical science.
I still couldn't tell you what physical science really is. It's not physics and it's not typical biology science. So I did not do well in that class either, and I was always friends with really smart people, like they were always getting really great grades around me, and it was awesome to have those friends because I always had friends that were motivating for me. I looked up to them and I wanted to get the grades they got and study with them and have the atmosphere around me.And I would still say to this day, that is the kind of friend group that I want to be around, people that I look up to and can learn from and who motivate me.
So that was probably the positive, positive aspect of having friends that were killing it in high school.
But there was always also that side of me that just didn't feel smart enough. And I knew that I wanted to go to med school one day and I knew how important grades were. But a huge part of me just thought, like, I probably won't be able to do it, and I remember actually a boy that I liked had said to me, like, oh, do you even get good grades, because we were talking about kind of my future goals, about wanting to go to med school, and he really just was like, do you even get good grades to do that, though? And it made me feel really bad because I responded and I lied saying, like, yeah, my grades are amazing, but I didn't even have the GPA to apply for the Honor Society.And when I got my ranking for high school, they ranked us in terms of, you know, what place you were based on your grades in the class. I got around two hundred something out of like a class of three fifty, so I felt really low about myself in high school when it came to grades. And unfortunately, grades really defined us as kids in my house and my family, our family-friends like grades were just so important. Your SAT score was so important and all of that amazing stuff, but I don't want to talk about high school for this long because that kind of carries over into college.
So I chose my college based on where I knew I would do well. So I didn't go to a big name school. I went to a small school in Boston, Mass. College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
They have a very high acceptance rate. And I started my journey there and I was like, this is a fresh start. I am going to just try my best to do well in my classes. And I finally got my first A in biology and I finally felt like I have a chance to really get better grades. So I stuck to the study method that I used in college and I just religiously stuck to that all four years of college and I was able to change my bad grades into better grades. But that feeling of fulfillment was short term because then I came to take my mcat exam and I kind of hit my low point again when it came to insecurities and not feeling smart enough compared to other people around me. Other people that I was seeing on YouTube share their scores about getting in the 90th percentile, 95th percentile, and they studied one summer, six months, and they were able to reach that. Whereas I was studying for the mcat where I was paying or my mom was paying for the Princeton boot camp course for practice materials. And I was just going, going, going and not getting the results. And that was extremely discouraging because I took my first mcat exam the same year I was applying to medical school and I got my score back. I thought I had done well, which is the funny part. But I got my score back and it was a five hundred. And originally I had planned to apply to only MD schools. So when I got that score of five hundred, I was like, there's no way that's happening. And I got so discouraged that I didn't even finish my applications. After sending in my primary, my letters of rec, everything. I didn't even finish my apps because I was like, no one's going to take me with a five hundred and I shouldn't have done that. That was my self-doubt, my insecurities that stopped me.
And I would really recommend anyone that's listening to this, whether you're premed, whether you're a med student applying to residencies, whether you're not even in the science field at all., and somehow you're on my podcast listening. Don't let your negative mindset stop you. Like, I never would have known if I had just applied, maybe I would have gotten in somewhere. And if you're someone who's like applying for jobs and you don't feel good enough for a certain job positions, you really never know your job. I've learned your job is just to do it apply, and the it's the other person's job to figure out if they're going to take you or not.
But I definitely hit my low points when it came to the mcat, because I took it three times and I finally reached a score where I felt comfortable applying to both MD and DO schools. And then I got to medical school. And let me tell you, that whole feeling of just not feeling smart enough has stayed with me.
And I'm really trying so hard to get over it. And, you know, if you guys have found ways to get over it, definitely reach out to me on Instagram. I would love to share your strategies, even for my other followers on YouTube and Instagram. But people in med school are very smart. They study very long hours every single day. And I personally can't get myself to sit longer than five hours to study a day.
And that does not sound like a lot. But I really only study five to seven hours.
That's my average for the day. And the rest of my day is usually spent focusing on my business, focusing on my YouTube channel, trying to learn more and not having a network of creative people who are also in this space is difficult. Like I don't have someone I can go to and I can ask instead, I do see people who are like killing me on social media. And I just kind of I'm left there wondering, like, am I doing something wrong? Am I not good enough in the creative space either? And that's just my negative mindset taking over. But you have to channel these things into a more positive like channel. You need to instead of thinking about like what is it that I'm doing wrong? Or like, why am I not good enough? Instead of having, like, talking to yourself so negatively like that, you should just reach out to people. And I'm starting to do that too finally, I send a message and I ask questions and I let myself be vulnerable, even though it's scary because we're all scared of judgments being made about us. I even with twenty thousand subscribers, I honestly feel like that's nothing. And I honestly like it's just like I have certain goals for myself, and I constantly will feel like, oh, I'm still like I'm not good enough, I haven't made it, or I'll feel like really shy reaching out to someone because I'll feel like I am not worth their time.
And I just wanted to come on here and say these are normal feelings to have, but for some of us they're really high end and they're really crippling and they hold us back. So I'm definitely finally reaching a point where I'm able to get past it and get shit done. But if you're listening to this and there are certain things that you like in life that you've missed out on because of this same problem, then work with me here and let's change that and turn it around.
That's it for today's podcast, you guys. Thank you so much for listening.
If you've got one little thing from this episode, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review. It means a lot to me and I read them all.
If you haven't left a rating yet or review on Instagram or YouTube, I would really appreciate it if you could check it out. If you've enjoyed this podcast, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any new episodes released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. See you in the next one.
I'm your host at Kinza Hussein and I'm a second year medical student and YouTube with 20K subscribers helping students navigate the ins and outs of one of the most competitive careers. So today we are going to be talking about insecurity and not feeling good enough either in the creative space or in medical school. And this topic is really just kind of coming from me and my personal feelings about being in the creative space while being in medical school and feelings of insecurity that come with that and feelings of not being good enough and not being smart enough.
So we are going to talk about that mostly, maybe just so I can kind of share that with you guys and get it off my chest, but also talk about why these feelings are just crippling and they're not adding any value to our lives.They only hold us back rather than allowing us to grow into better versions of ourselves.
So I am kind of talking to myself today with this podcast while I also share with you some thoughts I've had on this. Growing up, I was never a straight-A student and education was very important in my household. So my mom and my dad really valued education. They are Pakistani parents that came over from Pakistan to get their education here for college and their masters, and they wanted to have their kids here to give them the best life possible. If I have any Asian listeners listening to this right now, you guys know the whole deal. So education was just very important under our roof and it was important to get good grades. But throughout I remember elementary years, I can't really say when my grades were, but once medical, once sorry middle school started, things became more defined as to our grading system was A, B, C, D, and I was a B student and once high school started, things got harder. And my freshman year is when I got my first C or multiple C's, I got I remember I got a C in geometry and Spanish and there must have been one other. Oh, physics. No, not physics. Physical science.
I still couldn't tell you what physical science really is. It's not physics and it's not typical biology science. So I did not do well in that class either, and I was always friends with really smart people, like they were always getting really great grades around me, and it was awesome to have those friends because I always had friends that were motivating for me. I looked up to them and I wanted to get the grades they got and study with them and have the atmosphere around me.And I would still say to this day, that is the kind of friend group that I want to be around, people that I look up to and can learn from and who motivate me.
So that was probably the positive, positive aspect of having friends that were killing it in high school.
But there was always also that side of me that just didn't feel smart enough. And I knew that I wanted to go to med school one day and I knew how important grades were. But a huge part of me just thought, like, I probably won't be able to do it, and I remember actually a boy that I liked had said to me, like, oh, do you even get good grades, because we were talking about kind of my future goals, about wanting to go to med school, and he really just was like, do you even get good grades to do that, though? And it made me feel really bad because I responded and I lied saying, like, yeah, my grades are amazing, but I didn't even have the GPA to apply for the Honor Society.And when I got my ranking for high school, they ranked us in terms of, you know, what place you were based on your grades in the class. I got around two hundred something out of like a class of three fifty, so I felt really low about myself in high school when it came to grades. And unfortunately, grades really defined us as kids in my house and my family, our family-friends like grades were just so important. Your SAT score was so important and all of that amazing stuff, but I don't want to talk about high school for this long because that kind of carries over into college.
So I chose my college based on where I knew I would do well. So I didn't go to a big name school. I went to a small school in Boston, Mass. College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
They have a very high acceptance rate. And I started my journey there and I was like, this is a fresh start. I am going to just try my best to do well in my classes. And I finally got my first A in biology and I finally felt like I have a chance to really get better grades. So I stuck to the study method that I used in college and I just religiously stuck to that all four years of college and I was able to change my bad grades into better grades. But that feeling of fulfillment was short term because then I came to take my mcat exam and I kind of hit my low point again when it came to insecurities and not feeling smart enough compared to other people around me. Other people that I was seeing on YouTube share their scores about getting in the 90th percentile, 95th percentile, and they studied one summer, six months, and they were able to reach that. Whereas I was studying for the mcat where I was paying or my mom was paying for the Princeton boot camp course for practice materials. And I was just going, going, going and not getting the results. And that was extremely discouraging because I took my first mcat exam the same year I was applying to medical school and I got my score back. I thought I had done well, which is the funny part. But I got my score back and it was a five hundred. And originally I had planned to apply to only MD schools. So when I got that score of five hundred, I was like, there's no way that's happening. And I got so discouraged that I didn't even finish my applications. After sending in my primary, my letters of rec, everything. I didn't even finish my apps because I was like, no one's going to take me with a five hundred and I shouldn't have done that. That was my self-doubt, my insecurities that stopped me.
And I would really recommend anyone that's listening to this, whether you're premed, whether you're a med student applying to residencies, whether you're not even in the science field at all., and somehow you're on my podcast listening. Don't let your negative mindset stop you. Like, I never would have known if I had just applied, maybe I would have gotten in somewhere. And if you're someone who's like applying for jobs and you don't feel good enough for a certain job positions, you really never know your job. I've learned your job is just to do it apply, and the it's the other person's job to figure out if they're going to take you or not.
But I definitely hit my low points when it came to the mcat, because I took it three times and I finally reached a score where I felt comfortable applying to both MD and DO schools. And then I got to medical school. And let me tell you, that whole feeling of just not feeling smart enough has stayed with me.
And I'm really trying so hard to get over it. And, you know, if you guys have found ways to get over it, definitely reach out to me on Instagram. I would love to share your strategies, even for my other followers on YouTube and Instagram. But people in med school are very smart. They study very long hours every single day. And I personally can't get myself to sit longer than five hours to study a day.
And that does not sound like a lot. But I really only study five to seven hours.
That's my average for the day. And the rest of my day is usually spent focusing on my business, focusing on my YouTube channel, trying to learn more and not having a network of creative people who are also in this space is difficult. Like I don't have someone I can go to and I can ask instead, I do see people who are like killing me on social media. And I just kind of I'm left there wondering, like, am I doing something wrong? Am I not good enough in the creative space either? And that's just my negative mindset taking over. But you have to channel these things into a more positive like channel. You need to instead of thinking about like what is it that I'm doing wrong? Or like, why am I not good enough? Instead of having, like, talking to yourself so negatively like that, you should just reach out to people. And I'm starting to do that too finally, I send a message and I ask questions and I let myself be vulnerable, even though it's scary because we're all scared of judgments being made about us. I even with twenty thousand subscribers, I honestly feel like that's nothing. And I honestly like it's just like I have certain goals for myself, and I constantly will feel like, oh, I'm still like I'm not good enough, I haven't made it, or I'll feel like really shy reaching out to someone because I'll feel like I am not worth their time.
And I just wanted to come on here and say these are normal feelings to have, but for some of us they're really high end and they're really crippling and they hold us back. So I'm definitely finally reaching a point where I'm able to get past it and get shit done. But if you're listening to this and there are certain things that you like in life that you've missed out on because of this same problem, then work with me here and let's change that and turn it around.
That's it for today's podcast, you guys. Thank you so much for listening.
If you've got one little thing from this episode, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review. It means a lot to me and I read them all.
If you haven't left a rating yet or review on Instagram or YouTube, I would really appreciate it if you could check it out. If you've enjoyed this podcast, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any new episodes released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. See you in the next one.
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