When I was in high school, I used to be a huge perfectionist when it came to schoolwork. I thought that if you failed a test, you must not have tried hard enough and were a failure. I had a really hard time seeing the positives when it came to failing because I was always taught that it was a negative thing to avoid at all costs. That was until an episode of The Simpsons helped change my perspective on failure. That episode is the first episode of season two, entitled “Bart gets an F.”
After Bart Simpson persistently refuses to take his studies seriously, and keeps doing badly in school as a result, the school psychologist recommends to Bart and his parents that he repeat fourth grade. Not wanting the embarrassment of being held back, Bart vows to improve. So for the next exam, Bart actually tries to study for the first time in his life. And I mean really tries. Every trick in the book, you name it, he does it. He gets the smartest kid in in class to help him improve his study habits, he literally ends up praying to God to have a snow day so he can have an extra day to study, and he ends up locking himself in the basement to get away from the temptation of the snow so he can focus and cram. After all that effort Bart put in, all that energy he spent studying, surely all that hard work paid off and he got an A, right?
Wrong.
Despite all the hard work, despite all the effort, Bart still fails. Bart is devastated, and understandably so. He even says, “This is the best I can do and I still failed.” I mean it sucks, when no one has faith that you can do something, and you try the hardest you can, and you still fail. It must hurt even more so when you might get held back for it. That must be soul crushing. But fortunately for Bart, all is not lost. He ends up lamenting that he now knows how George Washington felt when he surrendered Fort Necessity to the French in 1754. His teacher, Ms. Krabappel, is impressed by Bart’s use of applied knowledge, and ends up raising Bart’s grade up to a D-, just enough for him to pass.
This episode actually taught me a lot about failure. For one thing, it taught me that sometimes, you can put all your effort into something and still fail at it. It doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you, or that you’re a failure, it’s just that life can suck sometimes. But it’s not how you fail, it’s how you get up that matters.
Bart failed, but he managed to get back up by applying knowledge he learned. Another thing this episode taught me is that it matters doing your best, not the best out of everyone, as long as you try. If you measure yourself by whether you’re doing better than everyone else, you’ll always be miserable, because there will always be someone better than you. You just have to try your best, and do your best, and be better than you were the last time. Bart tried his best, and it turned out the best he could do was a D-. But that’s ok because he actually put in effort for it and tried his best. Plus, he did better than what he did last time.
Finally, this episode taught me that some of the most useful knowledge is not learned from tests. Learning how to apply the knowledge you gained from school to real life isn’t on a test, but it’s just as if not more useful than having to memorize and regurgitate concepts on a test. It might seem like learning how to take tests properly so you can get the best grades is the most important thing, but as you go through life, you learn that that’s not the case— there are other things that matter. It just matters that you get back up and try your hardest.