Our friend, Thomas Edison, once remarked -- rather famously! -- that he didn't fail to invent the lightbulb 1,000 times. No! He just discovered 1,000 ways that didn't work.
In this exercise, bare your soul.
1) Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed -- whether in this class, or outside of this class. Don't spare any details! It'd be even better if there was something you tried several times this semester, and failed each time.
2) Tell us what you learned from it.
3) Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure. Failure is hard, isn't it? It's embarrassing, sure, but it also means that we have to change something about ourselves. Talk about how you handle failure (emotionally, behaviorally). Finally, talk about how this class has changed your perspective on failure -- are you more likely to take a risk now than you were just a few months ago?-------
This semester has been a time of great growth for me. I feel that I have been pushed to my limit several times but each time I think I grew a little more as a person. That hasn't always been reflected in my grades, but I think that as I am lying on my death bed, I don't stress about the grades I did or didn't get but rather reflect on how I lived my life. I'd like to break this post into a few sections in order to show how I've grown in different areas of my life through failure.
Grades
This is one area of failure we can all relate to. In my economics classes I've not done as well as I have in the past. I have received C's and B's and that's not something I'm used to. Regardless of how much effort I've put into my assignments, I feel that i always come up a little short. The same goes for my Chinese class; remembering characters, tones, Pinyin, and the endless grammar rules feels overwhelming. We have quizzes once or twice a week, so it's difficult to stay on top of it all.
Work
As a pharmacy technician, I'm always learning something new. Whether it's how to handle insurance or what each drug does, each day is full of potential to learn. And oftentimes I've failed to learn due to stress or how busy we get.
Spiritual
I've noticed that when my prayer life suffers, so do the other areas of my life. And I think perhaps that's the reason for being constantly overwhelmed and not being able to manage my life as well as I think I should be able to. I feel tired 99.9% of the time and so I neglect my readings and prayers more often than I'd like to admit. In this way, I feel that I have let myself down.
Hey Rana,
ReplyDeleteSchool is overwhelming. I also feel that sometimes I work super hard and don't get the results I want. Through this course I have been able to almost celebrate failure which is different than I am used to. It teaches you that failing can be okay and perseverance is key. I hope you can push through some of your struggles and start to achieve what you want! Good job on this post, keep it up!
Hi Rana. Another awesome post. I too have struggled with my grades, and it gets very frustrating. However, I have learned to give it my all and not give up. I used to get awful test anxiety and struggle very hard with my studies because of it. However, I realized when I sit down to take the exam I either know it or I don't. With this mind set my test anxiety has practically vanished. Anyway, great job on the post.
ReplyDeleteHey Rana, great job on your post! I think me, you, and really everyone can relate to struggling with grades at some point or in some class. It is the fact that we don't give up that makes the struggle all the more rewarding. I think its great that you have a connection between your spirituality and yourself, and I think that a connection like that can potentially help a lot of people.
ReplyDeleteHey Rana, great post about your failures in these different areas. In your Chinese class, I could not imagine the amount of difficulty it is to learn the thousands of characters they have for their language and the fact they are not the same as our Germanic language structure would overwhelm me. I think Spanish is hard enough let alone Chinese.
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