Failure is a quintessential part of life, ever so pervasive such that if one told me they never felt it before, I would dismiss their comments with the utmost of scorn. It is a central tenet of learning; failure is the greatest teacher, the greatest motivator, and the greatest source of humility. For if one never experienced such a feeling, their life would immediately stagnate - progress cannot be made without failure. Failure is the nagging feeling that puts humans in their place; it is responsible for making us humans remember that we are not gods and that perfection is always just beyond our grasp.

While failure is important, it is also imperative to understand that one's reaction to failure is what dictates their future. Any grit shown requires patience, as, without patience, any amount of failure is meaningless. Patience requires an attitude that is fixated around the idea of hope. Hope is the belief that circumstances may rectify themselves in the future; without hope, patience is impossible to justify, rationalize, and more importantly, achieve.

I remember when I started interning at a psychology laboratory in New York City. I got a good taste of why a prerequisite for conducting research is patience. Learning how to appropriately map EEG data was quite difficult to learn at first, especially for a high school student who has never set foot in an electrophysiology class. I started learning how to use EEGLab by myself with little aid.

My first task was known as artifact rejection, where I had to determine what signals were noise and what signals were the actual responses to various stimuli. This task was one of the hardest things I needed to learn, and despite seeking help from the postdoctoral students and my PI, the learning curve was super high. I failed so much trying to get it right, but my own grit and desire to succeed in this lab were the two catalysts that made me want to continue learning until I became an expert, such that I believe I can now reject most types of EEG artifacts without a problem.

A huge aspect of failure in my life was when I failed to gain admission to a single Ivy League school or MIT, which made me obviously upset and made me deviate from my usual cheerful demeanor. However, I will stress that once I got over the initial denial and the next three stages of grief, I learned to accept that circumstances were out of my control; I can't always get what I want because that is not how life works.

It will test you, bully you, taunt you, kick you down and spit on you, pressure you to give up, but one thing I learned is to be patient because, from my own experience, patience is always rewarding. Failure taught me that I am not a shoo-in for colleges and that I have my own imperfections, but my own patience has enabled me to keep getting back up and realizing that I still have a long way to go before I can make my dreams of success a reality.