Thursday, March 3, 2016

Failure is a prerequisite for success.

By: Beverly Asante, Toppel Peer Advisor


Everyone has to experience failure in life. It happens to the best of us. It hurts, it’s unfortunate, but it is part of what makes us human. Think about it, without failure, how would we grow? It’s the times that life kicks us while we we’re down that really allows us to appreciate it’s great moments. I know this may be difficult to hear while you’re still in battle, but just hang in there, because the sweetest victories are the ones that you fight the most to achieve. No matter where you find yourself, whether it be studying for an exam or grabbing coffee with a friend, I hope you can relate. 

Failure will occur within your college career. 

Whether it be an exam, a project, or even the class itself. Failure will come, and it doesn’t have to necessarily mean a failing grade, it can be a potential goal that you set for yourself that you didn’t quite reach. It could be something as simple as the moment you stop trying. Whatever your definition of failure is, it isn’t always a bad thing. As human beings we naturally have conflicts and to our best ability, we try different tasks to overcome these conflicts. If we fail at overcoming them, then we adjust our plan, and take a different approach.  This is how failure within our academic career should be viewed.  If you fail the first exam for example, just look at it as a test run. Take note of where you went wrong and then apply that knowledge, by adjusting your plan and ensuring success in future exams. Again, life is all about adjustments and failure all though painful, forces you to adjust until you get the results you deserve. 

Failure is good.

I’ve mentioned before that failure hurts. I mean it reealllyyy hurts. Yet, that pain is just what we need to motivate us when we are not working to our full capacity. For example, I am sure we’ve all had times where we underestimated something. Until we realized that, that something was a lot more difficult/serious than we anticipated it to be. That’s when failure comes and sneaks up behind us like a thief in the night. Again, failure although it sucks at the moment, will force us to work harder. It will motivate us to make every single moment better than our last. This is where success can be derived from failure.  Having a goal, acting on that goal, and the human ability to believe in that goal despite some little failure is what makes us who we are and is central to human advancement, and our future. 

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