There’s a new bad boy in town, and he’s taking over.
He’s a sneaky creature, manifesting himself in various forms, often rearing his ugly head at the most inopportune time. His name strikes fear in our hearts. We strive to escape his rapacious grasp by scrambling up the mountain of problem sets and essays and lab reports, determined to reach the safety that is guaranteed us at the summit. Yet as soon as we stop to catch our breath, to rest and recoup for a moment, we find him lurking just around the next corner, ready to pounce. We throw our hands up in frustration and hurl every expletive in the book at him, this parasitic beast come to ambush us.
Who is he? Why, he is none other than Failure — and he’s not quite as vicious as he appears.
From the moment we step into the classroom, we are pushed to set goals for ourselves: weekly, monthly, yearly. The aim is to promote growth — intellectual, social, personal — through achievement. We take a pretest before learning a new concept and a test upon completion of the unit to assess our retention and understanding of the material — to evaluate whether we have reached the unit objectives. But this approach, by focusing on the before and after, prioritizes the end result and neglects a substantial chunk of the learning process: the between.
This is the middle ground, the rocky terrain fertile for growth. This is where we make our mistakes and learn from them, where we experience setbacks and obstacles. It is the land of mental breakdowns and frustration and emptied tissue boxes. It is where we wrestle with old and new ideas, where we challenge our beliefs and open up our minds to the strange and foreign. The development that takes place here is arguably more significant than the final achievement of our goals. As such, even if we fail to meet our ultimate objectives, we have still gained tremendously from the experience of simply trying.
Let us not be afraid of this beast called Failure. We should aim high, setting goals which appear daunting at first, which force us to step outside our comfort zone. And then, we should eagerly embark on the arduous journey towards the achievement of these objectives. If we are faced with setbacks and obstacles along the way, that's all they are: temporary roadblocks. Failure is not permanent. It is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, the fact of having failed at something means we tried in the first place. We've attached such a fatalistic connotation to the word that failure has come to represent some sort of black hole which has the potential to, at any moment, inhale our hard work and extinguish our resolve.
We forget about our courage in commencing this journey in the first place. We forget about the personal and emotional growth, the memories gained and lessons learned along the way. We forget about the triumphs — big and small — which pepper this odyssey. These are all experiences which shape who we are in the present and who we become in the future. And if we hit a roadblock, what is so shameful about admitting that we have stumbled? We should be proud for having embarked on this adventure in the first place — by no means an easy task — pick ourselves up, and try again.
Failure does not define us, but it shapes us through the enduring lessons it teaches us. It makes us stronger, more resilient. It teaches us the value of hard work and makes all our successes that much sweeter. Failure is not a bad word; it is not a malicious beast. No, Failure is a tame creature, a temporary visitor come to plant seeds of wisdom which will thrive and blossom long after his departure.
