Celebrating Failure

This semester, I definitely failed at a lot of things, both big and small. There were tiny failures, like forgetting to do my cupcakes week after week (oops), and bigger ones, like needing to drop organic chemistry because my grade was so low (double oops). 

I have learned that I need to learn how to organize my time and priorities better than I’ve been doing thus far. Clearly, I was not together enough to remember to do the weekly cupcakes in this class by noon on Monday, and I wasn’t dedicated enough to organic chem to diligently study the material each and every day. Now, I know that I 1. Need to set reminders on my phone to do the cupcake assignments, and 2. Need to prioritize certain classes and studying their material over taking naps or TV breaks. It has been a hard pill to swallow studying my you-know-what off for a class that I don’t particularly care about, and still failing the exams (talking about orgo). In order not to feel like an idiot and a total failure, I had to realize my strengths at some point, and understand that chemistry is just not one of them. And that’s okay! There are still ways I can end up having a fulfilling career and life without needing to take the organic chemistry sequence.

I take failure very seriously, and am often too hard on myself about it. Even when I fail at the smallest thing, it conflates in my mind and blows the situation out of proportion. It also causes me to forget about all the small and big victories that I’ve had, to negate the failures. All in all, I am still moving in the forward direction, even if there are small steps backward here and there. It is important to understand that failing doesn’t make you a failure — because even through it we’re learning to be better as people and understand ourselves more.