 Merry Christmas, everyone. I'm Boris. I'm a second-year physician-assistant student at home in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house over winter break. And I know a lot of you have PA school interviews coming up really soon, so I want to talk about the most important thing when it comes to your interview. And that's how you feel about yourself. So if you've got an interview coming up, I want you to put down your sample questions, all the facts about the school, all that stuff that you've been memorizing, and listen to me. People don't remember what you say. They remember how you make them feel. People don't remember what you say. They remember how you make them feel. That's why I'm telling you the most important thing you can do to prepare for your interview is to get yourself feeling good about it, about yourself as an applicant. If you feel good, your interviewer will feel good. If they feel good, they're more likely to put more high marks on that little Likert scale that they get. And if you get a lot of those, you have a much better chance of getting in. Now, if this isn't your first time on my channel, then you already know that I like to take complicated things and break them down into small, easy-to-understand pieces, and make big things seem a lot less intimidating. So how do you feel good about your interview when you're nervous as heck, and maybe this is your only interview invite, and so you really just have this one chance to get into PA school? If you think about it, that's a lot of pressure. You've been preparing for this day for years, taking undergrad classes, staying up late to study, all the late nights, all the coffee, all the time that you had to spend getting your patient contact hours, all the work you put in, everything you sacrificed, and it all comes down to this one Zoom meeting. I'm getting nervous just thinking about it, and I'm not even in your shoes. So, I mean, I've been in your shoes, I know how it feels, but like even right now, just like I can imagine, you're very nervous, and that's only because it means so much to you, and you've prepared so much, so it's completely understandable, but we still need to fix it. So here we go. Here's what you need to do. Number one, get some privacy. If you have your own place, then go home, turn your phone off, turn your iPad off, make sure there's no distractions. If you live with other people, then tell them to leave you alone just for a little while, maybe half an hour, maybe put some headphones on with some white noise. If it's noisy, I just want you to have no distractions. I want you to be alone with yourself, and your thoughts, and your piece of paper. Go sit in your car if you have to. I've had to do this when I was living with other people, and I had some important brainstorming or something to do, and it was loud in the house. I would go sit in my car and do this. There's nothing wrong with sitting in your car to get some privacy. So just go get some privacy, and let's move on to step two. Step two is let yourself feel how nervous you are. It's okay. You're allowed to be worried. You're allowed to think about how important this is to you, and how bad it would be if it went wrong, if you didn't do well in the interview, and maybe didn't get into PA school this year. You're allowed to think that that's a bad thing. However, you are not allowed to judge yourself. You're allowed to have the negative thoughts. You're allowed to be afraid. You're allowed to have the fears. You are not allowed to judge yourself because everybody's afraid. Everybody has fears and negative thoughts, and it's totally normal. So observe the thoughts, have them, but don't judge yourself for having them. And also write these thoughts down on your piece of paper. Just totally get them off your chest. I'm so nervous right now, and when I'm nervous, I say stupid things, and I'm awkward, and people don't like me, and if the interviewers don't like me, then I'm not going to get in, and my life is over. Thoughts like that are okay to think and okay to feel because you're already feeling them. So telling yourself not to is just counterproductive. You may as well just feel it, and then you can heal it. So just let it out. Write it down. If I mess up this interview, my mom or my dad or my friends or my professors are going to be really disappointed in me. If I mess up this interview and don't get into PA school, I don't have a plan B. I don't know what I'm going to do. I have all these student loans and my life is over. Okay, just get it all out there. Okay, step three. Now, when you're ready, look at all these negative things you've written down and ask yourself, does this have to be true? When I've said things that were awkward in the past or if I say something awkward, have people always thought less of me? Have I ever said something awkward in front of a friend or a professor and that person is still my friend or that professor still wrote me a letter of recommendation or helped me during office hours? If I don't do well in this interview or even if I don't get into PA school this year, will my parents or my professors or my friends really think less of me? They might be disappointed. Sure, they want the best for me because they love me and they care, but will they really give up on me? I think they won't as long as you don't give up on yourself. If you don't get into school this year, is your life really over or can you keep working, get more high quality patient care hours, maybe retake a class or two, maybe get some more life experience and then come back stronger and be a much better applicant next year? So let yourself have these negative, catastrophic thoughts, but don't judge yourself for having them because we all have them and they're okay. But then once you've got them off your chest, I need you to question them and then show yourself how they are not necessarily true. And once you've done that, you're ready for step four. Okay, step four. Now take that same pen and piece of paper or maybe a new piece of paper and write down all the reasons you think you were offered an interview in the first place. Why are you a good candidate? You know that once you get that interview invite, you are on the same level. You are just as good as everyone else who got an interview invite. It doesn't matter if they had a 3.9 and you had a 3.4. It doesn't matter that they were a paramedic for 20 years and have 40,000 PCE hours and you just scribed on weekends during your undergrad and maybe you have 900 PCE hours. You're equal. You are the same. You were both invited to the same school to get an interview for the same program. And now you have the same chance to get in as those other people. They are no better than you are. Maybe English wasn't your first language. It wasn't my first language. Okay, none of this matters. If you were offered an interview, you are just as good as everyone else. So now take that piece of paper and write down all the reasons that you are a good candidate. Did you get excellent grades? Did you take a lot of higher level, really difficult courses and do well? Did you get some excellent letters recommendation from professors and maybe PAs or doctors that know you very well and have a great connection with you and could truly speak to your potential as a PA student? Did you get to go on an amazing mission trip that maybe gave you a perspective that most people don't have? Did you grow up in a very underprivileged environment and maybe you can offer a very unique perspective that way? Did you overcome barriers like health problems, poverty, maybe a language barrier? Write these things down. And then read them back to yourself several times so that you can truly prove to yourself how excellent of a candidate you really are. If you were not excellent, if you were not one of the best candidates that applied to that school, you wouldn't be offered an interview invite. So that's just a fact and you have to believe it because it's a fact. Only excellent candidates get interview invites and you have an interview invite. Therefore, you are an excellent candidate and that's just a fact. So you may as well believe it. Okay, now that you got your baggage all out on the table and you've sorted through it and then really focused on why you actually are as good as your school thinks that you are. Now you're ready for that interview and now you're ready to get after it and go get that seat in the class. I'm so proud of you guys. I love hearing your stories. I love hearing about when people get interview invites and when they get into school. I love answering questions about PA school and just life in general. If you want me to edit your CASPA essay or if you want me to do a mock interview with you, reach out to me through my website boristhepa.com. If you just want to say hi, reach out to me through my Instagram at boristhepa. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one.