Comparison Kills Joy

I'm behind, according to no one but me.

It’s raining cats and dogs outside. Ontario has been so hot, so humid the past couple of days, that the rain felt like relief. I got home just before it started pouring, and sat by the window, typing this, watching it come down. But rain has a specific power to make people feel reflective, and moody, and emo, and whatever it is you want to call it. Nonetheless, I have something to confess.

I’ve been stuck in the comparison trap lately.

Every Vietnamese kid knows this phrase: “con nhà người ta”, meaning someone else’s kid who’s always doing better than you at the thing you’re struggling at. Eventually you grow to hate this kid, or secretly envy her and strive to become one. And I fell into the latter category.

I’ve been doing this kind of math my whole life. I do it with my boyfriend, who’s always several lectures ahead of me in studying, even though his method takes him twice as long to get through the same material so he has to start earlier just to keep pace. It’s ingrained in me. It was this drive that got me top grades my whole academic life and landed me in a type-A career, and it comes with a matching amount of emotional baggage¹.

This kid didn’t know yet that “con nhà người ta” would follow her all the way into a veterinary clinic twenty years later.

Lately, it’s been even worse. One friend shared news from their externship, where they’ve had multiple solo appointments and caught several diagnoses on their own. Another told me about the number of solo surgeries they’ve been getting to do, which is already in the high twenties. They were just excited to share something good that had happened to them, yet I took it and turned it into a scoreboard. My head ran the same math again: how many solo appointments they’ve had this month versus me, how many surgeries, how long they’ve been trusted with a scalpel without someone standing behind them.

I want all of those things too. And the moment I start comparing and feel bad about not getting to do them, my body physically retracts into a shell. My shoulders come up. I pull inward, like I’m trying to take up less space in a building I’m allowed to be in. I go home grumpy about what I didn’t get to do. I dwell on it long enough that a clinic I love being at starts to feel like somewhere I have to brace myself before walking into. I even stop asking to do things, which is the exact opposite of what I should be doing. I’ve gone complacent in my own growth.²

What actually matters is whether I’m learning, and so far I’ve learned so, so much. Some of the doctors already take my opinions into account before they treat the patient. I’ve taken histories, run full physical exams, given vaccines, worked up ear infections. I’ve learned a whole lot. I just keep forgetting to count it because it doesn’t look like the thing I actually want.

I held a python for the first time ever. That must count for something!

Maybe what I’m actually hung up on is a fear brewing underneath, that the doctors here haven’t fully trusted me yet. But I’ve only been at this clinic four weeks, and that’s not enough time to prove anything. A job probation is three months for a reason. I don’t know how long my friends have been at theirs, what their doctors are like, and what clinical experiences they've had that put them a few steps further.

Not getting to do certain things yet doesn't mean I'll fumble once I'm out there on my own. Instead of dreading why I haven't reached someone else's level and shaming my lack of ability, I should focus on practicing the skills I want to eventually perform without supervision. I’ll circle the goal that’s the most important in red pen: keep learning as much as I can, and ask for more when it’s appropriate.

I have four weeks left at this placement. So I’m going to ask my preceptor if I can ramp things up—take one appointment beginning to end, history, exam, diagnosis, treatment plan, with her there only to watch. It’s a big ask for someone with only four weeks of trust built up. I’m asking anyway, because I don’t get to hide behind the excuse of “I’m still new” forever. I’d rather not leave this clinic full of regrets and wondering what if I didn’t hold back.

Perhaps that’s the trick: catch myself in the act, the way you catch your own hand halfway to your mouth, nail between your teeth, and go, oh, there I am again. Recognize when I start comparing myself to someone, and gently step out of the loop before it even spirals.

That’s how I’ll turn “con nhà người ta” into just a concept, and not someone I aspire to be.

1. Someone on Substack called emotional baggage a “griefcase” the other day, and I haven’t stopped laughing about it since.

2. I’m not a therapist, and I know I should’ve signed up for one this summer. But here I am, without one, trying to figure this out on my own. Again.