Imagine waking up and you're back in high school; you've just finished your mock exams and have the UCAT next week. The last few years of starting medical school, freshers’ week and its associated ‘hangxiety’, and passing all the hurdles of interviews, exams and requirements to get in never happened. You'd now have to do it all again.

As medical students, we are often used to success. From GCSEs to A-Levels, UCAT to interviews – to even get into medical school you have to repeatedly excel throughout your life. Failure is a normal and healthy part of life; you can't always succeed in everything you do, but I think as medics we are particularly underprepared for it.

I remember in our first year of medical school we were warned that many of us came from backgrounds where we were towards the top of our schools, but now we were in a cohort full of people who were too. We were told those who were getting A's at school may now get C's, and that's ok, but I think this was initially still hard for many of us to deal with. Anyone can handle success, but handling, learning, and improving from failure takes real character and courage.

Any doctor you meet (even neurosurgeons) will have experienced failure, whether they are just starting or at the top of their field. They too will have once been medical students addicted to success, but they learnt how to grow from failure (using the Gibbs reflective model I'm sure). To get to their positions there would have been many times they also risked failing, which is very daunting.

The BMA is more than a union for doctors – it also represents medical students and as a professional association, it supports us to develop and grow throughout our careers. When it came to deciding the theme for this year's medical students conference we wanted something that combined these functions. We wanted a theme that would encourage good debate and that students could learn and grow from.

The medical students conference is one of the most important grassroots events in the BMA’s calendar where delegates from every medical school not only debate and vote on important motions, but also have the opportunity to develop themselves. While we already know the importance of working hard to succeed, we thought it would be good to think about the times when things may not go according to plan (a story that'll make a skeleton cry), why those times aren't the end of the world, and how they can make us better people and doctors.

Our worth doesn't come from our successes; it comes from our attributes. As medics we persevere, we are empathetic, and we are courageous, and these attributes are as true during our failures as they are during our successes. We hope this conference provides an opportunity to recognise this and the courage it takes to grow from failure.

If we were to wake up tomorrow in high school with this having all been a dream, I am sure all of us would do it again, give it our all, and risk failure for the opportunity to train in this amazing profession, care for people, and most of all, get to attend the BMA medical students conference!If you are not a delegate at this year’s conference, you don’t need to wait until next year to get involved. You can listen to our inspirational keynotes and motion debates as they happen. The livestream link will be available on the conference webpage once the event starts on 27 March.

Omar Al-Rubaie is head of strategic communication on the agenda committee. He is a 5th year MB/PhD student who completed his preclinical studies in Sheffield and is now in the 2nd year of his PhD at Cambridge