280: Dealing with Perfectionism in Grad School

280: Dealing with Perfectionism in Grad School

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Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: [00:00:00] I have struggled with perfectionism for as long as I can remember. Going back to the first day that I started elementary school, I was six years old. I started first grade. No, I did not get to go to kinder or pre k. I didn't know a word of English. And I remember being terrified of a school setting because I had zero background knowledge on what school was, what to expect.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And when it came down to using a pen and paper, I dreaded using. An eraser. In fact, I avoided using an eraser so much that I would crumple up multiple pieces of paper when I would make mistakes in writing my first name.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Perfectionism then followed me throughout my K 12 years. It followed me in college. It even continued to follow me in grad school. And it wasn't until Near the latter part of my grad school journey that I [00:01:00] started to recognize these perfectionistic traits and how they were getting in the way of me making progress on my dissertation and finishing my PhD.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And slowly but surely I started to find strategies to help me combat perfectionism, which ultimately helped me to Like I said, make progress, finish, and move on with my life. And so for today's episode, I thought I would bring up this topic because I know that there are many of you that are currently still struggling with perfectionism, and you might find this topic especially relevant for you.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: and especially helpful.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Welcome to the top global ranked and award nominated grad school femtoring podcast, the place for first gen BIPOCs to listen in on conversations about grad school, And growth. [00:02:00] In this podcast, you'll learn about all things higher education, personal development, and sustainable productivity. This is Dr.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Yvette Martinez Vu, and I will be serving as your femtor, providing you with tips and tricks and everything else you need to know to successfully navigate grad school and beyond. For over 14 years, I've been empowering first gen students of color along their personal and professional journeys, And I'm really excited to support you too.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I interrupt this episode with two brief messages. The first is a visual description. One thing you might notice about my solo episodes is that I don't publish the videos for those. I do publish videos for my guest episodes. Nevertheless, I usually share a video previewing my episodes and in it you have a visual.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So because of that, I want to make sure that everybody gets [00:03:00] access to that visual description. So for this episode, I, Doctora Yvette, I've got olive skin, I've got dark brown straight hair that's pulled back in a ponytail, I'm wearing a white t shirt, I've got tan over ear headphones, I'm sitting on the same chair I've been sitting on for a while, which is a white chair but it has a purple throw on it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: cover on it. I also have a white shelf on my top right and that shelf has a succulent and it has a framed poster of my book, It's Grad School for Me, and then on my top left I've got some Decorative star, silver starburst wall decor. And then you can see a little bit of my black mic on the bottom left.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That's my image description. The second message I wanted to make you aware of is that I have a workshop that I'm putting on. I've been teaming [00:04:00] up with some folks to put on collaborative workshops. This is my first in what will be a series of a couple of workshops I'll put on throughout now and the rest of this calendar year.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So this workshop is all about confidence building and the title is Your Confidence is Inevitable Cultivating Your Story and Systems. I'm working with my amiga and colega, Camila Lux Zapian. She is someone who, um, considers herself a undergrad and grad admissions consultant, creativity and empowerment coach, but really she's really great at helping people to Identify and craft their stories, work on their legacy building, and exploring their spirituality.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And we're going to be talking about confidence building from two perspectives. So she's going to bring in the storytelling aspect of it. I'm going to bring in the systems aspects of it. And [00:05:00] we're really, Coming at it from a top down and bottom up approach. So we're trying to make it as open and accessible as we can with how we promote ways to increase your confidence building as you work on achieving your goals.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So if you're interested in it, it is going to be a more hands on workshop. There is going to be time for doing some exercises, for discussion, for Q& A. It's an hour and a half. It's on April 20th at 4 p. m. Pacific time. The deadline to sign up is the day before April 19th at 4 p. m. Pacific time. Please don't miss the deadline so that way you can join us after.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: For those of y'all that join us or anybody who signs up you get access to the recording along with slides and transcripts, so please join us if you want to. This is a great way of getting to know each of us. Further, if you've been thinking of [00:06:00] working with us, or just in general, it's a great way to support our work while you tend to yourself and your needs.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So that's it for today. I am going to transition us back to the topic of the episode.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Yvette. Today I have a short and sweet solo episode for you. This episode is all about how to combat perfectionism in grad school. This episode is dedicated to one of my recent clients.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I recently took on a full load of new coaching clients. They are all graduate students. Many of them are taking qualifying exams or working on their dissertations. And one of my clients brought up this topic as something she wants to explore in a future session and something that she wanted me to expand on or provide a resource [00:07:00] on.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And I went back to take a look at my archive of podcast episodes, and I did cover this topic with a guest, but I was very surprised that I hadn't covered it on a solo episode. So that's what prompted me to want to record this episode, so that we can have a conversation of the What even is perfectionism?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: This commonly used term. Where does it come from? How does it manifest? And what can we do now to combat it? What can we do now so that you can, like me, go from being a perfectionist To a recovering perfectionist. And yes, I identify as a recovering perfectionist because it is something I have to actively work on all the time.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It's not like, yay, I'm completely better. It's no longer a thing. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't mess with me. No, I still sometimes catch myself. falling into traps of perfectionistic [00:08:00] tendencies. And when I catch myself, I apply those strategies that I'm going to be sharing today. So let's start with What even is perfectionism?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: For me to define it in simplified terms, when I think about perfectionism, I think about a common tendency to set really, really high standards of ourselves, and then being really critical of ourselves when we fail to meet this often impossible standard. Beyond that, and perhaps more importantly, what I want you to be aware of is that perfectionism is actually one of many characteristics of white supremacy culture.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: When I think about that, about perfectionism as a systemic issue, to me, that reminds me that it's not a me issue, that it's not a personal failing, that it has nothing to do with me and has everything to do with the environment around me. And [00:09:00] so, I'm borrowing this idea of perfectionism as a characteristic of white supremacy culture from a poster that I have , and the poster that I have is one that was adapted from white supremacy culture by Tema Okun, and I hope that I'm saying the name correctly, but I got this from dismantling racism dot org is a really handy, very pretty visual guide on the different tenets of white supremacy culture. It includes perfectionism. It also includes a sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worshiping the written word. Ha ha. That's a big one because I can relate to that. Believing that there's only one right way of doing things.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Paternalism. Oh gosh, I cannot deal with paternalism. Either or thinking, or I might even say black and white thinking. Power hoarding, fear of open conflict, [00:10:00] individualism, thinking that you're the only one. Progress, meaning always having to do more, always having to do bigger things. Believing in objectivity, hence why a lot of researchers insist on quote unquote doing objective work, which You know, I hate to break it to you, no research is objective.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And then the right to comfort. These are all the different characteristics. So today I'm not going into all of them, I'm only going into one of them, and that is perfectionism. for them when they're describing perfectionism in this poster that I'm referring to that I got from dismantling racism dot org it says that perfectionism is described as having little appreciation for your work or others work, criticism being more common, mistakes being seen as personal failings, and then they mention different anecdotes and some of them include developing a culture of [00:11:00] appreciation and expecting people to make mistakes and using those mistakes as opportunities for learning.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So all of this to say that perfectionism is rooted in a systemic issue. There's nothing wrong with you if you're feeling perfectionistic tendencies, but it still might be deeply impacting you and your work. How might it be showing up? Like I said, not appreciating your work.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Either you not appreciating your work or perhaps you're working with a professor, with an advisor who also has perfectionistic tendencies and so they are not appreciating your work for it not meeting their standards. Thinking that your work is a reflection of you and it's a personal failing and viewing mistakes as [00:12:00] personal failings rather than opportunities for growth.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And then also really focusing on all the things that you're doing wrong and not giving yourself credit for all the things you're doing right and using those times that you are acknowledging the things that you're doing wrong and taking that to mean that there's something wrong with you. These are different ways that it might be showing up.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Now, in it showing up this way, it also means that it could lead to you being less creative. It could lead to you Taking fewer risks. It could lead to you avoiding failure. And having a big fear of failure, like so much so that my fear of failure has gotten to the point where I would often catastrophize.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So one small failure would then lead to this compounding effect or this domino [00:13:00] effect of this would then become that would then become that. And then eventually I would not have a roof over my head and not be safe and Like ultimately leading to my death. Like that's how bad I would go with my catastrophizing and with my fear of failure.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So I get it. If it feels physically unsafe for you to let go of perfectionism, please know that you're not alone. Another way that you might notice it coming up for you, especially as a grad student, is that You might dread feedback. You might avoid it altogether. You might feel defensive. You might feel sensitive.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: You might avoid looking at it or avoid addressing it. And that can be a really big challenge because for most of us, we're expected to get feedback and to make those changes. It's part of the peer review process. And so it's something we will need to confront. [00:14:00] Now, the other thing about perfectionism, which is why I want you to start taking it more seriously, is that there are studies that show that perfectionism is , significantly associated with burnout, with, , reduced mental health, reduced wellbeing.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And so it has a substantial impact on your body, mind, and spirit. So with this in mind, I also want to mention a couple of other things related to being First Gen BIPOC and how perfectionism might be directly linked to other root causes. So I'm thinking here about how perfectionism is also often related to, or triggered by, Imposter Syndrome or Imposter Phenomenon.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Really how the Imposter Phenomenon can lead to your feeling of inadequacy, which can lead [00:15:00] to you feeling like your work is not good enough, which can lead to you working twice, three times as hard and or avoiding your work altogether because you don't think , it's reached that standard that you're looking for.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Then there's also Cultural expectations that some of us have. Some of us come from cultures where education is prided as that thing that's going to Get us out of poverty or get us out of being working class. That's going to be our ticket to upward class mobility and more opportunities and stability.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And so with that, there comes a lot of pressure to succeed and a lot of pressure to do well, and it feels like there's no option to fail. I had that pressure as the eldest daughter, as the first to finish college, as the first to move out of my home. I felt like I had no option. I couldn't fail. For me, it felt, I'm not saying that this was factually true, but it felt like [00:16:00] it was the end of the world for me to fail and that was because of The cultural and familial expectation that I had, that I placed on myself too, it wasn't just coming from family, it was also something that was deeply ingrained in me from a very, very young age, like from when my dad was alive.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And he was very, very strict on us and our education and getting straight A's. So that cultural expectation, That familial expectation carried on and then I internalized it as like, I always have to do well and if I don't do well, then the world is going to end. That's how I felt. Then there's also lack of role models.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I did not see any professors that truly modeled healthy work life balance. I know I don't really like that phrase work life balance, but Everybody that I met that was a professor around me when I was an undergrad and when I was a grad student [00:17:00] was overly busy, complaining about how over involved they were, burnt out, stressed out.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: A lot of times I wondered if they even had life outside of the academy and I didn't see anybody who looked like me, who sounded like me. Who had the same struggles that I had? Struggles with communication, struggles with writing, struggles with just feeling conflicted over, you know, wanting to do more applied work and that pressure of doing research that wasn't necessarily community oriented.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So I just didn't have role models of folks who could give me an option of what I could strive for. And so the role models I did see, that's what I was striving for. I was striving to replicate the overwork, [00:18:00] the busyness, the burnout. And that definitely played a role in my perfectionism because it didn't matter how hard I tried.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I couldn't meet their standard because I wasn't them. So there's that. Now let's go into some of these strategies because I know I've been going on and on and on. And by now you might be thinking, wow, I can definitely relate. If you can't relate, you know what? I applaud you. And I think that's really, really great.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And that there was probably someone out there who helped to nurture the side of you to make sure that you developed a growth mindset to make sure that you viewed mistakes as opportunities for learning. And I think that's a wonderful if you are that person.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And I'm really hoping and praying that my babies are like that too, that, that they Do not fall into the trap of having perfectionistic tendencies. Who knows? I'm doing my best, but you never know as a parent. So , if you don't have to worry about [00:19:00] this, I still think you should keep listening because odds are there will be someone that you are in community with, someone in your surroundings that might be struggling with this.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And if you notice it. And if you ask if they're willing to accept solicited advice, not unsolicited advice, because I can't stand that, but if they're open to it, you can always share this with them. So let's get into the strategies. The first one, which is not always simple to do, is to set realistic goals.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: What do I mean by this? I mean, when you set a deadline for yourself, give yourself some wiggle room. If you're going to give yourself a deadline for a week from today. Give yourself another week, couple of more days. If you're setting a deadline [00:20:00] for two months from now, can you add two more weeks to that?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Because why? Life happens. Sometimes we set arbitrary deadlines or we go based off external deadlines and those external deadlines don't always match our capacity levels. In fact, one of my clients recently was dealing with this tension of realizing You know what? I only have certain hours of the day.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I've got a child to take care of. I can only work these hours and they're expecting me to work all the time. So one of the strategies that She's implementing to help set realistic goals as she's doing her time blocking of figuring out when during the week she has blocks of time to prioritize her work in graduate school.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And then based on those hours, based on those time blocks, that's how she's setting her goals of [00:21:00] she can work but within these hours. And based on what she can accomplish within those hours of like keeping track of what's doable, she'll be able to set goals for what she can accomplish each semester and each year.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Even if that means that might delay her timeline in her program, she's willing to delay her timeline so long as she's able to finish her program sustainably because she does not want to burn out. She does not want to quit. And I think that's a very smart way to set realistic goals is to do that through, for her, it's the time blocking and setting boundaries around the time blocking.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: But for you, it could mean giving yourself some more grace with your deadlines. It could mean starting to track the way that you do work. So starting to treat your, the way that you work, not just Not just meeting deadlines, but then analyzing yourself and your output to start to notice your [00:22:00] rhythms and to start to notice what is realistic.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: , what is your pace? Like, how much can you get done in a certain number of hours? How much reading? How much writing? And then start to base your deadlines and your milestone based on what you know you realistically can achieve. And also always, I'm always, always telling people, give yourself wiggle room.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Life happens. If you're first gen BIPOC, trust me, life happens for you probably more than for your peers. I've got folks who have all kinds of responsibilities. They're mamas, they're grandmamas, they're caregivers have taken in nieces and nephews. They might have full time jobs.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: , There's just so much going on in their lives, dealing with elderly family members who are terminally ill. It's a lot. It's a lot. And so I just can't stress enough that life will happen in grad school to everybody, but it's, it tends to impact some of us more than others. So [00:23:00] always give yourself some grace and you can do that by giving yourself more wiggle room, by always, Giving people an external deadline for yourself that's later than what you actually think you can accomplish.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: The other thing is something that I kind of referenced earlier in terms of a strategy, which is, I mentioned the growth mindset earlier, which is that belief in viewing failure as an opportunity for growth or as an opportunity for learning. So giving yourself permission to make mistakes, believing that you can get better at things, not believing that if If you've always been bad at something that you will continue to always be bad at something.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So that's a big one. This is not as easy to do in practice as it is for me to just say it out loud. It requires a lot of self reflection and reframing. This is why folks sometimes want to have the [00:24:00] support, sometimes with the therapist, sometimes with the coach, sometimes with a trusted friend of, it can be hard to notice our thought patterns.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And if you're talking it out with someone and they're a good active listener, they can start to notice your, your thought patterns and they can start to gently challenge you to reframe those. thoughts that you're having. So for example, let's say you worked on a chapter and you got the chapter back from your advisor and they give you a lot of feedback and there's like one comment in particular that's really really bothering you that feels like a personal attack on you.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That's almost seems, You're like, why is my advisor giving me a petty comment about my writing? And you take that as like, oh my gosh, I messed up. I failed. This is the worst chapter anybody could ever write. [00:25:00] If you say that out loud, maybe to your therapist, maybe to a coach, maybe to a trusted friend, and they start to notice, they might be like, you know what?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: You're being really, really hard on yourself. What if you give yourself permission to get a lot of feedback? And what if you give yourself permission to make that part of your process? And guess what? I feel like I'm talking to myself because I totally had a session like that with my own coach this week where I was , really hard on myself and I didn't realize how hard I was being on myself until I said it out loud and they caught me and I was like, Oh, right.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I am still very hard on myself, even though I practice self compassion, even though I'm actively learning to reframe my negative thinking, it still comes up sometimes. So. Embrace a growth mindset by finding opportunities to reframe your negative thought patterns related to [00:26:00] mistakes or failures. And then of course, tied to growth mindset, it's the practicing self compassion.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And here I want to shout out a resource that my own business coach recommended, which is the self compassion workbook. I'll link it in the show notes in case you want to check it out because I'm also checking it out myself to see how I can continue to support me and my journey towards working on becoming more compassionate.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Because as I've mentioned before, I actually believe that compassion is the antidote. to oppression and that includes self compassion because how can you be compassionate to others if you're not first offering that to yourself? So when I say practice self compassion, I mean things like giving yourself more grace, being kind to your future self when you do your planning, giving yourself wiggle room, talking to [00:27:00] yourself as if you were a child, So that inner child work or talking to yourself as if you were talking to your friend.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And this is not something that is easy to do on the spot. But it's something that you can exercise by setting aside some dedicated me time, some dedicated time for yourself, some dedicated time for reflection, perhaps even some dedicated journaling time. And even self compassion means giving yourself permission to slow down, giving yourself permission to take breaks, knowing and understanding that you do not need to earn rest.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Knowing that you do not need to earn your value, that you are inherently valuable. So these are all ways to practice self compassion. Now, another thing that could help, you could even add it on a post it note, is every time you catch yourself, Ooh, [00:28:00] I, I'm being a little bit too perfectionistic right now, or like, I keep trying to make this perfect and it's holding me back and I'm taking too long and I should have sent it by now.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Whatever that thinking is, that's related to perfectionism. If you catch yourself, remind yourself that this is a product of white supremacy, that this is a product of white supremacy culture. Remind yourself that because the more you remind yourself that it's a systemic issue, that it's not a you issue, then you can recognize it and realize, you know what?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I can snap out of it. I can give myself permission to turn it in as is. I can give myself permission to ask for an extension. I can give myself permission to do. good enough work or B level work or C level work or to just allow it to be what it needs to be, even if what it needs to be is a messy draft.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Some people call it shitty first draft, whatever it needs to be is what it needs to [00:29:00] be and letting it go. And then of course, this is a big one. The last thing I'm going to say when it comes to strategies for combating perfectionism is recognizing and embracing different ways of doing things. The way that you write, the way that you do research, the way that you work on your dissertation is not going to look exactly like the way that you write a book.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: The folks in your cohort. In fact, I, this is a whole other session I had with another client. I keep referring back to my sessions because I've been having a lot of sessions with different clients. I recently had a session with a client who is struggling with feeling the pressure of needing to write in an academic way.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And by that she means. Feeling the pressure to write by using [00:30:00] academic jargon, writing in a more formal way, where currently the way that she writes is more informal. It's definitely, definitely a lot more accessible. And when I asked her questions to kind of get to the root of things, At the end of the day, like, her work is about community work.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It's about supporting others. It's about providing accessible resources. So it makes sense for her to write the way that she writes. It's just that external pressure of feeling like she had to abide by this standard of writing that she sees is what she reads about. It's what other folks, that's how other folks write.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: in her department that was making her feel like she couldn't do it this way. But if you remind yourself that there are different ways of doing things, that there are different ways of expressing your research, there are different ways [00:31:00] of even writing, the process of writing. There's so many folks that are actively writing.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: But in multi modal ways and not giving themselves credit for all the writing that they're doing. What do I mean by this? There are folks that only count words on a page as their writing process, but then they don't count all the note taking that they're doing. They don't count all the times that they're sending voice memos to themselves.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: They don't count all the times that they're viewing their work and laying it out with post it notes in a visual way. All of that is part of the writing process. All of that is writing. And Instead of thinking, it has to be this one way, I can only write by putting words on a page, on a Google Doc, on a Word doc.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Then that can make you feel bad. That's a perfectionistic way of doing things. It's there's only one way and it has to be the right way. And the right way is the way that everybody else does it. When there's so many different ways to get at this [00:32:00] one outcome, which the outcome is to, ultimately, Complete a dissertation or complete a thesis in your case, or any case when you're in grad school.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Now another thing I want to mention related to this, related to combating perfectionism is that it's important for you to recognize how amazing you are, however imperfect you are, and to celebrate yourself. Why am I mentioning this? Because perfectionism will have you thinking that you are the worst, that you are a failure, and the more you can be self compassionate, the more you embrace a growth mindset, the more you can celebrate yourself and your milestones, the more you're going to be able [00:33:00] to reframe any mistake and any failure.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: as an opportunity for growth, as an opportunity to learn, as part of the process. Not something to avoid, but something to expect, to plan for. When you know that's something to expect and to plan for, that's when you're then this whole process is going to be a lot less scary. This whole process is going to be a lot less painful.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And that's what I want for all of you. I want all of you to start to find ways. And I'm not saying that if you do this, , the whole process of finishing your graduate program is gonna be great. No, of course we all go through setbacks. We all go through challenges. We all go through bad days, bad weeks, , bad months, even bad years, but it can certainly help.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So please give yourself credit for. All the amazing things that you're doing, even if they're not [00:34:00] great. And actually I want to give you all an example let me tell you this. One of the ways that I regularly combat perfectionism is by doing good enough work.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Because I'd rather do some work than no work. I'd rather get something done than nothing done. And that's something that I've been doing. And yes, that means you're going to get an episode like this, where it's You know, it's not fully scripted. It's not perfectly recorded and that's okay. All my early episodes, I recorded it on my phone and guess what?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Those are still my most played episodes. People still get a lot of value from it. So you don't have to do things perfectly for it to have an impact and for it to reach the outcome that you want to reach. And the example that I was thinking about was how I was presented with an opportunity at the beginning of this year.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: to submit a teaching demo so that I could record my own course with the company. And so that was part [00:35:00] of the, you could call it the audition process. It wasn't a given that I would get the course. First you have to give a teaching demo and after that they would pitch it to different entities to see who would want to take up your course and, and after they have that approved then you would get a course.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And. I thought to myself, , this would be a really great opportunity, but also, oh my gosh, the thought of creating a three to five minute demo video feels daunting because then I have to figure out the lighting and the sound and the script, etc. And I thought to myself, hold up, hold up, this is perfectionistic thinking.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: What would good enough work be? So for me, it meant, you know what, I have an hour, let's see what I can do in an hour. I recorded in my office the same way I always record any video. I just went off of [00:36:00] ideas that came up off the cuff. I think I rehearsed it a couple of times. And so it was a couple of times that I recorded it and I went with probably like my second or third recording.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I can't remember, but I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. I didn't overthink it and I just submitted it and I thought to myself, you know what, this is good enough. I didn't think I was going to get it, to be honest with you. And lo and behold, they came back to me and they told me that my pitch was approved.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And I got to record that course this year and it's going to come out very, very soon. So, just a reminder that sometimes good enough work is still a lot better than what you think. So, that's kind of how I'm going to close things. I want to remind you that, uh, You are valuable no matter how imperfectly you do things, that you deserve to take care of yourself.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: You deserve to celebrate yourself. You deserve to recognize your [00:37:00] perspective, your way of doing things and view that as valuable, even if it doesn't quite meet the standards that you see around you. I hope you found this episode helpful. And as always, I'll talk to y'all next time. Bye.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Thanks so much for joining me in the Grad School Femtoring podcast. If you like what you heard, here are four ways you can support the show. The first is to make sure you're subscribed and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you email me a screenshot, I'll send you a surprise freebie. The second way is to get your copy of my free Grad School Femtoring Resource Kit.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: which includes essential information to prepare for and navigate grad school. You can access it at the link in today's show notes. The third way to support my show is to follow me on social media. You can find me on Instagram with the handle at grad school femtoring and on LinkedIn by searching my name.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: The [00:38:00] last way to show your love is to order a copy of Is Grad School for Me? My Graduate School Admissions Book for First Gen BIPOCs. Thanks again for listening and until next time!