The Best in the World: The trouble with believing your own headlines (#524)

Somewhere along the way, we began saying it out loud.

The best veterinary school in the world.

It appears in brochures. In fundraising decks. In speeches. On banners at conferences.

Sometimes it’s said jokingly. Sometimes aspirationally.

Increasingly, it is said as if it were settled fact.

And every time I hear it, I wince a little.

Not because I don’t love the place. Not because I don’t believe in its people.

But because I’ve lived long enough, and worked in enough corners of the world, to know that the moment you label yourself number one, gravity begins its quiet work.

There is only one direction left to go.

Down.

The danger of the superlative

Superlatives feel good. They photograph well. They look impressive on donor plaques. They help development officers close gifts.

But they are also brittle things.

If you say you are among the best, you leave room for growth, collaboration, humility.

If you say you are the best, you leave no room at all.

You’ve reached the summit, which means every step afterward is technically a descent.

And worse, you stop looking up.

Medicine is not a podium sport

I sometimes wonder when education, and especially the health professions, adopted the language of the Olympics.

Gold medal. Number one. Top ranked.

As if learning were a 100-meter sprint.

Veterinary medicine doesn’t work that way. It never has.

The best schools I’ve known - Sydney, Guelph, Davis, Colorado, Glasgow - each had strengths and blind spots. Each learned from the others. Each borrowed ideas shamelessly.

Each had moments of brilliance and moments of embarrassment.

Progress came not from chest-thumping but from curiosity.

“Who’s doing this better than we are?” and “What can we steal - kindly - from them?”

Those questions disappear when you’ve already crowned yourself.

Hubris has a cost

When an institution begins believing its own headlines, subtle things happen.

You see it first in meetings.

Less listening. More defending. Critique becomes disloyalty. Questions become nuisances. Dissent becomes “not being a team player.”

The language shifts from

How can we improve?

to

How do we protect our reputation?

That is a dangerous pivot.

Because once reputation outranks reality, reality eventually catches up.

And it is rarely kind.

The quiet donors and the quiet workers

There’s another consequence too. One we don’t talk about much.

When you loudly proclaim you’re the best in the world, you unintentionally diminish everyone else’s contribution.

The small donors. The part-time clinicians. The technicians. The staff who keep the place running at 2 a.m.

It sounds as if the greatness already exists, fully formed, rather than being built daily by ordinary, imperfect humans.

But institutions aren’t great because they say so.

They’re great because:

• a nurse stays late to comfort a frightened student,

• a resident triple-checks a dosage,

• a clinician admits, “I don’t know, let’s ask for help,” and

• a teacher spends one more hour explaining neuroanatomy to a struggling kid from rural Idaho.

That’s greatness. And none of it requires a banner.

A lesson from animals

Animals have never impressed me with their need to declare dominance verbally.

They simply do the work.

A good sheepdog doesn’t bark, “Best dog in the world!” It watches the flock and moves quietly.

Competence is usually quiet. Insecurity is usually loud.

Institutions aren’t much different.

What I’ve learned, getting older

At this stage of my life, I’m less interested in being the best and more interested in being useful.

Useful to students. Useful to patients. Useful to colleagues.

If we focus on usefulness, excellence tends to follow.

If we focus on excellence as a label, usefulness sometimes disappears.

The irony is that the truly great schools I’ve known rarely called themselves great.

They were too busy working.

A different aspiration

If I could rewrite the slogan, it wouldn’t be:

“The Best Veterinary School in the World.”

It would be something quieter. Something harder. Something honest.

Maybe:

“Still learning.”

or

“Getting better.”

or simply

“For the animals.”

Because those phrases leave room to grow.

And growth, not self-congratulation, is what keeps us alive.

The moment you plant a flag at the summit and declare victory, the descent begins.

Better, I think, to keep climbing. Quietly ...

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