I love school. I truly do. I love it for your standard reasons: I get to see my friends everyday, I have some of the most amazing teachers and I enjoy the classes I take. I enjoy them all, with the exception of math. Math and I are NOT friends. We are what I like to call “frenemies."

I know that it is always there for me, because let’s face it, there is no way I can live without math. It shows up in every single class (my AP Language teacher made us calculate how many hours we had been practicing particular skill sets as part of a unit — those numbers got pretty high!) whether I want it to or not. Math always seems to find a way to get on my last nerve, make me want to throw my textbook out the window, scream and just quit. It just won’t even work with me sometimes. I’ll work on a single problem for 15 minutes and NEVER end up with the correct answer. I blame the math for that, not my lack of skills in the subject.

Back to the point. I’ve failed more tests in math than I can count throughout my school years. This past year in precalculus, I had a phenomenal teacher. I paid attention in class, did my homework every night, went in for help when I was confused and studied hard for both tests and quizzes. Somehow, though, I still managed to fail two unit tests in a row. At one point, I went to my teacher and asked her whether I should even attempt calculus this coming year. She told me that she knew I could do it — just continue studying and working hard. So I did just that.

The unit following those two failures, I worked my butt off. I went into the test knowing I would ace it, and came out knowing that I had just aced it. When I checked the online grade book one night the following week, I literally started jumping up and down. I got a 99! I couldn’t believe my eyes! I was excited beyond belief and that grade restored all my confidence that had been washed down the drain.

I might have failed a few times before getting that beautiful A+, but I kept trying and eventually did succeed!

Last weekend, a good friend send me a text out of the blue asking me the following:

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

He stopped me in my tracks, and I tried to truly consider the question very seriously.

I replied that I’d live everyday exactly as I do now and push that knowledge to the back of my mind. Failure is a part of life. It is what shapes each and every person living on this planet into who he/she truly is. Do you think life would even have a purpose if we couldn’t fail? We’d be living everyday knowing that what we set out to accomplish will be accomplished. Where is the fun in that?

The path to success isn’t a freshly paved road. It is a bumpy, worn down, driven-on road that has endured crashes, flat tires, broken down engines and exhaust. It’s suffered for days, weeks, months, and potentially years before anyone even considers repaving it, but, you can still drive on it perfectly fine and get where you need to go! That’s what is so beautiful about failure. Sure, it might bring you down, but if you believe in yourself and continue to drive forward, you will get exactly where you want to be in the end.

Life isn’t about getting things right the first time, hence why the phrase goes “third time’s the charm,” not “first time’s the charm.” You have to fail before you succeed. Maybe that’s why I failed two tests before finally passing one.

If I knew I couldn’t fail, I feel like I would also know that I couldn’t succeed, and who wants to live in a place where you can’t succeed? I’d rather fail 1,000 times over if it meant I could succeed once rather than not at all.

Failure teaches us a very important lesson: Perseverance is the key to succeeding. You have to persevere and keep trying, despite the potential for failure. "Can’t" isn’t a part of my vocabulary anymore, but failure is and always will be. I will keep on failing over and over, just as I will keep succeeding.

"Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success."
-Arianna Huffington

Once you learn to accept that, the world will become your oyster, and you will be able to do anything you set your mind to — even if you fail in the process.