MAYA GOERTEMOELLER
Year One
I used to think that “growth” was this linear, beautiful process where I would progress and progress until I ultimately blossomed into my “true self”. To say that this year shattered this gilded idea of what growth means would be a gross understatement. This past year broke me, but in putting myself back together, the new perspective I have gained is something that I would not trade for the world. I saw a quote once that said something along the lines of “in the breaking down, we are being broken open”, and these words resonate so deeply with me as I think back on this past year.
At the end of high school, it felt like everything I had ever wanted in life was finally coming together “perfectly”. I had graduated as salutatorian, spent my senior year as student body co-president, was recently admitted to the dual admissions BS/MD program with Cincinnati Medicine, was preparing to go compete at nationals with my dance team, and then, the whole world just stopped. School shut down. The doors of the dance studio closed. All of the plans I had been working on with student council were cancelled. Everything I had ever used to define myself was just gone in what felt like an instant. I spent the rest of the summer (over)preparing for college, hoping that I would find the normalcy I had been clinging to all of my life, watching endless hours of pack-with-me-for-college videos and carefully crafting a Target registry of all the things I wanted to set in my dorm room.
Once I finally got to college, it started to feel like I was getting back to “life” again. I was making tons of new friends, loving my classes, and getting good grades with ease. What I didn’t realize at the time, and something I am still coming to terms with, is that in these attempts to find this sense of perfection that I had always shrouded my life with, I lost myself. I stopped feeding myself enough. I was constantly bottled up with anxiety, some of which spiraled into anxiety attacks. My fear of failure became absolutely crippling.
Despite the chaos stirring inside of my brain, I was still perfectly “put together” on the outside. I turned in all of my assignments in way ahead of time, maintained a 4.0, had lots of friends, and was getting super involved on campus. My resume was blossoming in the linear fashion I described earlier, but my mental health was hanging on by less than a thread. Amidst my lowest moments, my roommate asked me to attend a bible study with her. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and this day felt like life was throwing me a rope to grab onto after I had been drowning for so long. “I have everything I could ever need, here in this moment. How could I ever want more?”. I clung to these words that I first wrote down in my bible, and in that moment, I finally felt myself being able to pull myself out of the riptide.
I spent many moments journaling out my thoughts, writing in the therapy app on my phone, playing piano, and doing everything I could to release my anxiety instead of holding it in like I had been doing for so long. It was, and still is, not always easy to take care of myself in ways such as these. There are still moments that I feel like one small failure will make my whole planned-out life come crashing down, moments where I find myself overanalyzing what I ate that day, and moments when I still find myself trying to be the “perfect” person that I once saw myself as. Despite these moments, I truly feel that life is “breaking me open” instead of “breaking me down”.
As I begin to rise into more leadership positions across the various organizations I am involved with, these moments of vulnerability have given me a new perspective to lead with. My battle with my mental health has made me a far more compassionate, authentic human being, and I hope that many years down the road as a physician, they allow me to connect with my patients on a raw, real level. More than anything, these obstacles have transformed the way I see myself. I feel so much more resilient. It is one thing to keep a 4.0 and hold several leadership positions when your life is being held together perfectly, but knowing that I was able to not just do that but thrive in these areas as I am putting myself back together is something that I am really proud of.
In looking forward at the rest of my undergraduate years, and even at the rest of life going forward, I can now see that my “true self” isn’t someone that I am going to find years down the road; it is someone that I already feel within myself. Even if this self isn’t always “perfect” as I had long imagined, I know that no matter what life throws my way, I will not just overcome it but blossom from it. I find myself leading with more authenticity and raw compassion, and I hope that as I take on these new leadership positions in the coming year, I am able to stay rooted in the idea that even in failure, there is beauty, and in this beautiful failure comes growth.
At the end of high school, it felt like everything I had ever wanted in life was finally coming together “perfectly”. I had graduated as salutatorian, spent my senior year as student body co-president, was recently admitted to the dual admissions BS/MD program with Cincinnati Medicine, was preparing to go compete at nationals with my dance team, and then, the whole world just stopped. School shut down. The doors of the dance studio closed. All of the plans I had been working on with student council were cancelled. Everything I had ever used to define myself was just gone in what felt like an instant. I spent the rest of the summer (over)preparing for college, hoping that I would find the normalcy I had been clinging to all of my life, watching endless hours of pack-with-me-for-college videos and carefully crafting a Target registry of all the things I wanted to set in my dorm room.
Once I finally got to college, it started to feel like I was getting back to “life” again. I was making tons of new friends, loving my classes, and getting good grades with ease. What I didn’t realize at the time, and something I am still coming to terms with, is that in these attempts to find this sense of perfection that I had always shrouded my life with, I lost myself. I stopped feeding myself enough. I was constantly bottled up with anxiety, some of which spiraled into anxiety attacks. My fear of failure became absolutely crippling.
Despite the chaos stirring inside of my brain, I was still perfectly “put together” on the outside. I turned in all of my assignments in way ahead of time, maintained a 4.0, had lots of friends, and was getting super involved on campus. My resume was blossoming in the linear fashion I described earlier, but my mental health was hanging on by less than a thread. Amidst my lowest moments, my roommate asked me to attend a bible study with her. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and this day felt like life was throwing me a rope to grab onto after I had been drowning for so long. “I have everything I could ever need, here in this moment. How could I ever want more?”. I clung to these words that I first wrote down in my bible, and in that moment, I finally felt myself being able to pull myself out of the riptide.
I spent many moments journaling out my thoughts, writing in the therapy app on my phone, playing piano, and doing everything I could to release my anxiety instead of holding it in like I had been doing for so long. It was, and still is, not always easy to take care of myself in ways such as these. There are still moments that I feel like one small failure will make my whole planned-out life come crashing down, moments where I find myself overanalyzing what I ate that day, and moments when I still find myself trying to be the “perfect” person that I once saw myself as. Despite these moments, I truly feel that life is “breaking me open” instead of “breaking me down”.
As I begin to rise into more leadership positions across the various organizations I am involved with, these moments of vulnerability have given me a new perspective to lead with. My battle with my mental health has made me a far more compassionate, authentic human being, and I hope that many years down the road as a physician, they allow me to connect with my patients on a raw, real level. More than anything, these obstacles have transformed the way I see myself. I feel so much more resilient. It is one thing to keep a 4.0 and hold several leadership positions when your life is being held together perfectly, but knowing that I was able to not just do that but thrive in these areas as I am putting myself back together is something that I am really proud of.
In looking forward at the rest of my undergraduate years, and even at the rest of life going forward, I can now see that my “true self” isn’t someone that I am going to find years down the road; it is someone that I already feel within myself. Even if this self isn’t always “perfect” as I had long imagined, I know that no matter what life throws my way, I will not just overcome it but blossom from it. I find myself leading with more authenticity and raw compassion, and I hope that as I take on these new leadership positions in the coming year, I am able to stay rooted in the idea that even in failure, there is beauty, and in this beautiful failure comes growth.