episode 25: Aubrey Vinh

September 15, 2019

Here is my favorite failure story. I got a negative twelve on the first test I ever took in college. The calculus professor deducted points for guessing, and because I was guessing a lot, I got the lowest negative score in the class…one so low that I overheard people talking about it as if it were a myth in physics lab later that day. I awkwardly blurted out that the score was mine. I felt awful. That night, I ugly cried to my mom and dropped the class. Then, I withdrew from my biochemistry program because I wasn’t great at that either. This is all funny to me now but, at the time, I was terrified and embarrassed. I had to confront lots of self doubt. And try to stop defining my worth with test scores (this is an ongoing process). In a weird way, I am grateful to have failed so epically at the start of college. Because my worst nightmare happened, and I survived. Eventually, I found psychology and creative writing – two subjects that I love but would never have tried if I had been a math or biochem genius. In med school, we often define failure as low exam scores and bad SP interactions. Nobody is immune to it. I still worry about it all the time, but I think learning to grow from these struggles is important. I also think it’s important to grapple with the failures that will come with the career we’ve all chosen.

I grew up in a small, two-stoplight town in rural New Jersey. Everyone knew everyone, there were more churches than coffee shops (ten times as many), the only gas station in town closed at 10 PM, and I had maybe one friend with divorced parents. It was overly idyllic in that way. I was even more sheltered from reality because my mom homeschooled me from fourth to sixth grade and taught my younger brothers too. There were no grades, no homework, no class presentations. When we were learning about ecosystems, my mom took us into the woods behind our house to catch tadpoles and take water samples. Once, she and other homeschool moms hired an archeology professor to dig a deep, deep hole in someone’s backyard and bury fake artifacts in it. He led us through a pretend excavation for a week. It was amazing. My mom gave us such a positive learning environment. And, luckily, I missed the years of school when kids start worrying about being cool and comparing test scores. When I reentered school in seventh grade, I was prepared academically. But I had no clue of what was “in” socially. We used to go to homeschool groups, where the norm was to memorize the entire Lord of the Rings Elvish alphabet and wear capes as part of an everyday outfit. I was protected from a lot of middle school angst because I was too busy pretending to be a wizard in someone’s backyard. I feel so lucky for everything I had, but this sort of upbringing gave me a very narrow worldview.

After college, I worked with young adults in foster care in Brooklyn for two years. One of my kids, let’s call him JT, moved from home to home a lot. Foster parents just didn’t have the patience to work with him, and he took each move very personally. At one point, he left brand new Nikes at a home that he had been essentially kicked out of, and it was my job to retrieve those sneakers for him. When the foster parent finally got back to me, the shoes had already been stolen by another kid. JT really valued those shoes because of all the things he had endured to get them. Losing them, on top of losing yet another home, was incredibly traumatizing. I wanted to deflect and blame the foster parent or my packed caseload, but, at the end of the day, the shoes had been lost because I wasn’t able to get to them fast enough. When he came to see me, I had to look him in the eye, and say, “I’m really, really sorry. This is my fault.” It sucked. That failure was so much harder to own than my negative score.

When I do badly in school, I can still think, At least, I’m a good person. At least, I haven’t let anyone down but myself. But I was working in this very flawed system, and I was the only person that many of my kids could confront when things went wrong. I had to learn to be okay with failing and being the “bad person.” In those moments, I reminded myself of how privileged I was. That foster care was a part of my job but not an inescapable part of my life. If my kids needed someone to process their frustrations with or if they needed someone to point a finger at, in either situation, it would be okay if that someone was me. I had to learn to understand my limitations. I think about this a lot in terms of medicine. One day, as a doctor, I’ll have to say, “I’m sorry. I let you down,” once again. I try to accept that, even though it’s scary.

So about JT, the kid who lost his Nikes. Last year, my coworker sent me a video of him saying, “Miss Arbrey (he could never pronounce my name), I just wanted to call. I wanted to see how school was going. Also, I’m graduating in June.” His success is definitely not because of me but, part of me thought, Maybe I did help a little, and maybe that’s why he’s leaving me a video message while I’m studying in Skyline. And that made it all worth it. That doesn’t feel like failure. That’s a very tangible, wonderful thing that I can celebrate. All credit goes to him, but I was there for part of it.

Who are your 5 most recently played artists?

Taylor Swift, Atta Boy, Frankie Cosmos, SAINt JHN, Khalid

If you could have any superpower, which one would you choose?

Would love to read minds. But not all the time. Only when I want to.

Pick someone or something from NYMC to give a shout-out too!

Shout out to the Resiliency Team! You all inspire me every day.

If someone wanted to talk to you, they should lead with…

A picture of food on the ground.

When I was working in the city, I walked by this pile of cookies three days in a row. On the fourth day, I put the cookies on my Instagram story. I thought it was funny and decided to keep posting fallen food. After awhile, people started sending me their own pictures of food on the ground, and I posted those too.

I think I make a pretty muted first impression in person, but when I put these weird things on the Internet, it’s like a virtual icebreaker. Instead of small talk, I get, “Hey I notice you post a lot of bread slices on the ground on your Instagram. Why?” I love it. So send me your bread slices!