Midterms. Nobody likes them, and they always stress us out.
Imagine that you have a midterm today and you’re really nervous because you know you want to do well on this test. You studied at least one week beforehand, reading each chapter carefully and taking notes, or you spent all the week testing yourself with flashcards to remember the concepts and vocabulary for the test. You go into the classroom and write the test, and afterwards you either feel like you did okay or you just have no idea what you did. After a few days of being anxious to find out how you did on the test, you get an email saying that grades are posted online now. You immediately go to check your grades.
And you failed. You don’t even know how to feel or think.
Now, this scenario happens to many students in real life, including myself. I can describe what you feel when you fail a test. Shame. Anger. Pain. Sadness. Disappointment. When I failed pretty much most of my midterms in my first semester at my university, I felt helpless and hopeless. I tried my best, but personally, I let myself down. Fortunately, the fact that I am still in university and currently writing this article means that I learned how to accept failure and moved on to success.
I would like to share some advice if you’re currently in the same position I was in before when I failed a test.
First, stop for a moment and breathe. A grade is just a number, and one bad grade on a test doesn’t define who you are. Your life will go on, and soon you will forget about that one bad mark (hopefully).
You’re allowed to cry, vent or be angry. Emotions are perfectly valid at this moment, especially if you studied hard for your test. I found venting to my friends or parents about my grades helpful because it felt like they knew where I was coming from. And they cared, they offered support and encouragement. Getting support and encouragement from your loved ones can make you feel a bit better with failure.
If, however, you don’t feel like sharing with someone and would rather keep the fact that you failed a test to yourself, that’s alright. I was in the same spot a lot, and it felt worse if you heard your friend saying they aced the same test. Instead of comparing yourself to other students and putting yourself down, take it easy on yourself. Take a quiet night in, and spoil yourself with Netflix and your favorite ice cream flavor. Distracting yourself from feeling negative will help you to feel positive and relaxed.
But don’t just ignore the fact that you failed a test and pretend everything will be okay if you don’t learn anything from failing that test. That’s a mistake I made in my first semester and I really wish I could go back and go over the test, and find out what I did wrong so I wouldn’t do it in the future. So, my advice is to go to your professors for help if you’re failing in their classes. Don’t sit around and wait until the end of the semester and it’s too late to do anything. Go email or call your professor, or drop by their office hours (most professors usually have office hours listed on their syllabuses). Your professor’s job is to teach students like you to pass their courses, and if you come to their office and ask for help, then they will be willing to help you with your grades.
Or if you would like to learn how to study better and get better grades, you could go to the countless services at your university, especially the learning services. Often the learning services offers tutoring and help with studying skills. I went there to get help with my classes and study skills and I can say that deciding to be brave and go for help really helped me in the long run.
The most important thing to remember when you fail a test is this: failing is a learning experience for YOU. Life isn’t always going to be sunshine and daisies, and maybe this is a wake-up call for you to reflect back on your studying habits.
After my disastrous first semester where I pretty much failed almost every class, I realized that I needed to take my classes more seriously and work harder with studying. So, I stepped up with reviewing my notes every day after classes and went for extra help with studying skills and my classes.
Now when I reflect back on my first year, I can say for sure that failure helped me to learn to work hard towards success in the next few years.
Yes, failing a test can feel so disheartening but if you learn from that and work to push past it, then you can be successful with the next midterm.