To Learn Grace Under Pressure, Study Dr. Taison Bell, Master of Flow – Darden Report Online

“I don’t fully know the circumstances of why I stayed with my grandmother,” he said. “But instead of growing up in a major urban disadvantaged area, I lived in a smaller city, where I had more access to resources and more of the chance to have success.”

The move didn’t solve all his problems, of course. Bell also struggled with asthma. The severe episodes landed him in his local emergency room on multiple occasions. He had to receive immunotherapy, which required weekly visits to a Lynchburg pediatric clinic.

In an unexpected way, his ill health turned out to be fortuitous.

“I remember telling the staff at a young age that I wanted to be a doctor, and they started calling me ‘Dr. Bell,’” he said. “When I showed up, they even wrote it on the chart. They are the ones who kind of normalized the dream of being a doctor for me.”

Bell circulated among the children being seen, telling them things like, “I know this shot’s going to hurt, but it’s good for you.”

His age was still in the single digits, yet he was serving as a cultural ambassador for healthcare – a role he would embrace later in life, too.

Mediocrity Was Not an Option

Though being a doctor had been his dream for as long as he could remember, the would-be physician became distracted during high school. He needed to buckle down.

For his speech to graduating students in UVA’s professional schools last year, Bell talked about the concept of flow, and how it involves just the right amount of pressure.

He spoke lovingly of his 11th and 12th grade civics teacher, Holly Frazier, who “pulled me aside one day and turned up the pressure. She told me I needed to get my act together, and from then on, I was going to take advanced courses and make A’s in them.”

She didn’t present the situation as a challenge to accept or decline. What she expected wasn’t optional.

UVA Today checked in with Frazier about her persistence with Bell. She confirmed the story, and she said she told his other teachers not to let up on him either. She didn’t know he had been identified in elementary school as gifted. All she knew was that he was smart enough to do more.

In response, Bell stepped up in his academics, including taking multiple advanced placement classes offered his senior year.

Frazier to this day refers to Bell as her “greatest success story.”

“The next year she encouraged me to apply to UVA and I was accepted with the help of her letter of recommendation and some late-breaking all-A report cards,” Bell said in his speech. “So a little pressure definitely benefited me. And what’s interesting is this concept of pressure for performance is true in human physiology as well. For example, if a patient is placed on a ventilator, we have to apply a minimal level of pressure to the lungs to prevent them from collapsing.”

But, he cautioned graduates, overdoing it is something to be mindful of as well.

“In the ICU, we know that if the lungs receive too much pressure, we can actually cause damage,” he said.

As an undergraduate Bell first learned to strike a balance in the pressure that he allowed on himself. Here, he met his future wife, Kristen, and began to say “yes” to a lot of opportunities – but not every opportunity.

After all, he had started out as a chemistry major.

“I wasn’t doing well in my biochemistry course, so I went to see my professor about withdrawing,” Bell said in his speech. “We sat down, and he told me, ‘Look, I’m going to sign this withdrawal form for you, and you can do what you want with it. But I believe in you, and I know you can do this. I hope you throw it away.’

“And I have to tell you, it was a good pep talk. I was inspired … I was inspired to walk even quicker to the registrar’s office and withdraw. It was too much pressure!”