I try to remind myself of something positive as I walk out of my chemistry lecture with my graded exam in hand. I wanted to tell myself, “Congratulations! You’ve officially completed your first month of college.” However, I don’t think anything I said to myself would’ve alleviated the fact that I felt like an absolute failure. I had failed both my chemistry and biology exams. No matter how hard I try to be the perfect college student (balance academics, work, and my personal life) I’d come home defeated every night.
I came to college with the assumption that failure was not an option! The only thing I am here to do is learn and succeed, but it wasn’t until I sat down and reflected that I realized I have failed my expectations, and that it was completely acceptable. For the next few days I wrestled with the idea of failure, more importantly, what failure meant to me. I slowly realized that I did not agree with the definition of failure; failure is not the “lack of success” as defined by the Merriam dictionary, but rather a necessary step to achieve success. I also realized that I need to redefine my definition of success, and that success and failure are not immediately related.
Over the week I began working on changing my mentality. I asked myself, “What is success? What are my goals? And what are my obstacles?” The big picture is to retrain myself, to accept failure and to see failure as a goal rather than a fear. Failure is part of success.
By changing my mindset about these disappointing outcomes I knew that I would have to put myself out there and ask for help. In high school I developed the behavior of never asking for help because it made me feel like I was dependent on someone. I realized that if the fear of being uncomfortable overpowered my ability to advocate for myself then my major obstacle would be myself.
Ultimately, I learned a lot about myself in the past month. The ability to self-reflect and adjust after confronting something I feared for so long exposed a strength of mine that I would’ve never considered unless I experience these series of obstacles. There is no reward for being comfortable and staying in the safe zone. By challenging myself I allowed my failure to develop into resilience and growth. To start achieving goals I need to start failing.