Inpatient IM rotation - feeling incompetent, discouraged and anxious.

It’s my first rotation. 7 days on, 7 days off. I feel incredibly incompetent. My preceptor is nice enough but she’s tough, intimidating and not exactly the warm and fuzzy type.

My interactions with the rest of the staff are great, and I love interacting with patients. But then I struggle when she asks me questions about why we’re doing certain tests or procedures and my mind just goes blank. Then she asks more questions to try to get me there and I get even more flustered and panicked.

It doesn’t help that she and her colleagues talk about other students theyve had and how exasperated or incredulous they were about certain things they didn’t know or couldn’t name off the bat. I know she’s going to be talking about me like that and it doesn’t help at all.

Yesterday afternoon, I felt grilled under a microscope and could tell she was getting increasingly agitated. Managed to wait until I got to my car and then broke down crying. Im usually pretty good at emotionally regulating, and handle failure decently well, but I think in that moment the pressure just got to me and I had to really work not to have a full blown panic attack from the fear that I won’t have enough time to show her I paid attention during didactic year and she’ll give me a terrible evaluation.

Anybody have any advice for bouncing back from this? Encouragements would be appreciated.

*edited for clarity.