Failure sucks. Especially when you’ve given everything you had, pushed yourself to your limits, and applied every ounce of energy inside of you. You struggle for so long and then one day someone tells you, “You’re not enough. You don’t have what it takes. You have not been chosen. You are not wanted.”

These words hit you like a slap in the face, an icy splash of water that trickles down your spine and leaves you feeling numb, empty, and worthless. Failure is one of the most painful emotions because it attacks every part of you. Your pride is wrecked, your brain is confused, and your heart hurts. For some unknown reason, you are not enough for whatever it was you were shooting for: a new job, the perfect grade, a spot on the team, or that competitive internship that only took one person. Failure hurts because you like to believe you are invincible. Even when the odds are against you, you imagine yourself victorious and expect that success is coming your way. You feel this way because you are surrounded by a message that says hard work is enough and that putting everything you have into something will only bring good things. In reality, only half of this statement is true.

Sometimes, you will fail even if you’ve tried as hard as you can. It is expected that failure will hit everyone at some point in their lives, but you just never expect it to hit you so hard. And a lot of this failure will come in college because it is the point in your life when you shoot for the stars, try new things, and seek new relationships. And because of this, it is also the time when you miss your goals, fall flat on your face, and encounter some pretty awful relationships. College makes this whole experience worse because you are alone. Your mom isn’t there to pick up the pieces of your bad day and give you a hug that makes everything better. You alone are responsible for pulling yourself together after a failure and moving forward.

This sounds awful, doesn’t it? Why even try to meet new people or do new things if failure is going to hurt so bad?

Failure is inevitable, but working as hard as you can is still enough. You should continue to try new things and push yourself farther than you feel comfortable doing because that is where growth happens. Yes, the failure will hurt. The failure will make you cry and feel as insignificant as possible. But the growth you experience during the process is necessary to move forward in life.

You are always striving toward some goal, whether it be finding a future spouse, landing a new job, getting a spot in the elite choral group at your school, or maybe even getting an A in that one class you never thought you could pass. Having something to work toward gives us the ability to experience change. And change is the only way to move forward in life because without change, you are just standing still, stuck in your comfort zone.

Failing in college hurts. But because of failure, you will grow up. Sure you can call your family or vent to your friends when things don’t turn out your way, but at the end of the day when you lie awake upset over the way something turned out, you have to rely on yourself to regain your composure. When you are rejected and feel worthless, you have to depend on everything you’ve ever learned about failure and make the situation into something different for yourself. This process of finding your own strength sucks, but it’s how you become stronger and it prepares you for the next failure.

So when you fail, let yourself fall apart. Be sad. Cry. Vent. Scream. Because if you worked as hard as you could and did everything you were capable of, in all reality, you probably deserved success. You did try your best and you are enough. But then, after giving yourself time to be upset, pull yourself back together. Push that failure aside and understand that because of the experience, you now have additional strength and courage that you didn’t have before. You have gained the motivation to prove that you are good enough.

Failure will never be easy to endure. But the more you fail, the more you gain. And each time you fail at something, you grow a little older, you understand a little more, and you get a little more fight in you. So experience failure fully because it offers so much more than a broken heart or crushed dreams. If you work as hard as you can, you still might not experience success. Instead, you might be lucky enough to experience a failure every once in a while that puts you on track to experience a success that you never imagined.