I remember the day when I failed my first test. My 10th grade chemistry teacher handed it back to me, face down, and made eye contact with me as if to say, “I see what happened here.” I flipped it over, sheepishly. I knew I had done badly. What I was not expecting was a big, fat, red zero written in the top right-hand corner of my page, and a note scrawled underneath it saying, “please see me after class.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t try to pass the test. It wasn’t I didn’t study well. In that case, I had just moved to a new school that was a month ahead of my old one, and I already had a shaky understanding of chemistry in the first place. Despite this, I still felt that cold, iron-like ball in the pit of my stomach. It didn’t matter to me there was no way I could have passed that test at the time. All that mattered to me was that I had FAILED.
That test was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I began to spiral downward. I felt like a failure in all of my classes and activities. I let that one test grade get into my head and neglected to accept what that failure actually meant and taught me in the end.
As a result of that test grade, I met with my teacher and was able to switch to a classroom where I could catch up on the things I had been missing. I got help and guidance from other teachers so I could stay on top of things despite having started late in the school year. My family rallied around me to support me and help me stay motivated, and I learned that even though I felt overwhelmed, I really could overcome even what seemed like the biggest obstacles.
While in the long run a single test grade is relatively inconsequential, failure in general is not. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized there's sometimes no way that I can succeed at everything, and that’s definitely okay. Sometimes it’s necessary to fail in order to discover a strength in yourself or to learn your limits as a person.
Since that one day in high school, I’ve definitely failed more than a few times. Do I let it get me down? Maybe at first, but learning to accept myself and my limits is something I have been working towards, and it’s been rewarding in all aspects of myself. Do I regret trying whatever it was I failed? Not for a second. My failures have been the biggest blessings, and the greatest opportunities for me to learn more about myself.
All failure means is you weren’t supposed to succeed in that moment. It doesn’t mean you won’t ever succeed in the future, or you weren’t meant to do whatever it was you attempted. All failure means is at that moment, there was something else for you to learn so in the future you will be successful.
