What do you do when you’re sweeping the floor in the living room and without warning a big chunk of dirt gets up and starts racing across the floor!!???
I wasn’t home at the time, so I guess we’ll never know. One of my son’s fiddler crabs escaped her cage and made her way out of his room, down the stairs and under the white chair in the living room. That’s where the crab was when our babysitter “discovered” her.
My son scooped up the crab and got her back in her tank with her buddies. BUT after placing the crab back in the tank, he could only see three crabs. Before the daring escape, there were four, two males and two female. ( I bet you’re wondering how to tell the difference.)
Hmmm. Only three.
My wife found this out later that evening, and let’s just say she was not pleased. What’s worse than an escaped crab? Two escaped crabs and one still missing. These things can climb and get anywhere, even onto your pillow. They’d proven it by getting downstairs. My wife wasn’t sleeping at home until that crab was found.
As it got closer to bedtime, she gave the boys an opportunity to earn some money. She put a bounty on the eight-legged creeper’s head. $20 apiece if the boys could find the missing crab.
She wasn’t messing around and neither were the boys. They jumped off the couch and got right to work. Top to bottom. They spent almost forty minutes looking before the seven-year-old gave up. My oldest decided to check the bedrooms one last time before calling it quits.
“I found her!” came the call from his room.
“What?” Called my wife, relief filling her voice.
“There are four in the tank; she must have been hiding the whole time.” The kid made a cool 20$ that night. I had looked in the tank earlier and had only found three crabs. Those suckers are good at hiding.
Here’s the question, was my wife afraid of something real or something only in her head?
Let’s work with the premise that the crab was dangerous and not just a little creepy.
There never was still never any “real” danger. The crab was in the tank the whole time. That didn’t stop my wife’s adrenal glands kicking into high gear: her heart racing and her blood pressure shooting up. All of that response was 100% real.
Your body and mind react precisely the same if the danger is real or is vividly imagined. It’s the same. The battle you’re facing on exam day might as well be against a saber tooth tiger. Your body only has one reaction to danger, and when you hit the panic button, it doesn’t matter if the danger is horrible evisceration or failing an exam.
The key is learning to control your responses by controlling your mind. Perceived danger is real danger. Fight or flight kicks in.
Everything has to do with how you handle it — meeting patients, taking exams, eight-hour surgeries, sitting in lectures getting a job.
In Physician Assistant Exam Scholars, we cover how to handle all of these situations and turn them into wins. We cover keeping you’re heart rate down, learning and excelling.
Come on in.
Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian Wallace