To express all your emotions that you feel at the moment would make you very unpopular among people. In the interest of social living, you are supposed to strike a balance between excessive emotional inhibitions which is an aspect of emotional maturity. It means regulation of feelings and emotions in terms of external and internal demands. This emotional control does not mean repression or elimination of emotional expression. Control refers to the training of the emotions which means modifying your expression and directly the manifestations into useful and approved channels.

The in-house USMLE review like any other endeavor involves constant interaction with different types of personality. You are subjected to varied situations where your emotional maturity will be tested, measured, as well as developed. Such situations can happen while discussing a topic during your USMLE review session, study group activities, social interaction with the peers you have gained from the review program as well as your own self as you deal with your own weaknesses.

All people have emotional weaknesses and it is quite impossible and foolish to aim in trying to achieve the ideal. But in as much as emotional maturity is an important ingredient of coping and adjustment during the two months of co-existence in preparation for USMLE Steps, you should consider this aspect of your personality in the course of development.

Emotional maturity is concerned with the proper development and control of feelings and emotions. It also refers to your capacity to react in a variety of life situations in ways that are more beneficial than the ways in which a child will react. Emotionally mature medical students have the capacity to react properly in terms of the requirements that a situation imposes. This emotional maturity is characterized by the following:

• The ability to delay or control the expression of the emotion

• The capacity to give adequate emotional response commensurate with your development level.

• The ability to have developed a reasonable amount of frustration – tolerance as to withstand frustrating situations without reacting to them in an emotional way

• The development of a fairly high level of flexibility and coping to changes that are dictated by opportunities and life's events.

Frustration and conflicts are individual experiences which are part of everyday living. They are deeply associated with the fulfillment of needs and they interfere with the normal expression of motivational tendencies. What really matters is how a medical student emotionally meets them and the action that he or she takes in resolving them.