Last week, USG held a discussion series about a recent TED talk by Brené Brown. The title of the talk is The Power of Vulnerability. As with many TED talks, there is good story telling, humor, and an encouraging message or insight.

The following discussion by attendees was multi-variable. The USG campus has students and faculty from many different walks of life, and so it wasn’t surprising to see where discussion led: the stigma of getting counseling or psychiatric help; the feeling of inadequacy in relationships; parenting and putting too much pressure on children; people having cultural and personal differences on views of vulnerability and perfection.

The meeting related to me personally with my studies. As a student of nursing, pharmacy, and medical programs, you are constantly being pushed to the limit in terms of amount of material that has to be learned in a short amount of time. Bad grades, regardless of the amount of studying put in, can hurt your ego. Just recently, I walked into an exam on Chronic Kidney Disease thinking I had thoroughly studied. I received a mid C, which killed my day.

But one bad grade (or even two or three) is par for the course with college. As a student, you have to step back and have confidence in yourself. You won’t know everything. As much as you want to leave school and drown your sorrows in alcohol down the road at Union Jack’s, part of getting through school is playing to your strengths, knowing your limitations, and learning to let go of a bad grade or a bad test.

Confidence in yourself is key to being an effective health care provider, or whatever else you want to be in life. At the end of the day, you learn what you can, get through your courses, and you learn more on the job.

You know more than you think you do.