26A – Celebrating Failure

1) Earlier this semester I experienced a failure that really hurt me mentally and really affected the way I viewed my education. I was enrolled in business finance and I failed on the tests so bad I had to drop the class. Although I am a freshman, I decided to take on business finance because I really thought I could handle it, but wow was I wrong. On the first exam, I got a grade that I thought would never happen to me and it destroyed my self-confidence. I studied more for that exam than I did throughout all of high school combined and still ended up with an abysmal grade. I thought that maybe I could try and turn it around and still manage to pull myself out of this pit and pass the class with a C, even though I need a B, so I stuck with the class. Again, I worked very hard and spent countless hours studying for the second exam and I did better than the first, but the grade was still something I wasn't proud of. I had failed my expectations of myself again, and my self-confidence went spiraling downwards again and I felt like I shouldn't even be at UF anymore. I feel I should've put more quality of time into studying and I just feel I wasn't prepared mentally enough for this class and what it would require from me as an individual.

2) What I learned from failing at this class on two exams was how I need to fix my priorities and I need to find out how to study better for myself. Personally, I really felt like I could've put more serious time into this class because all of the advice I heard from people who took this class in the past said to study right after the first lecture. I procrastinated and prioritized other aspects of my life and left the studying for the last minute. My grade really reflected this. In addition, I also learned that I actually need to learn how to study properly. I never had to study or put extra time into my work at the high school level and still managed to get straight A's. Going into college I had that same mentality and I really got burned by this. After this failure, I will make sure to improve upon what I have learned.

3) Failure is something that everyone experiences, but not everyone experiences it in the same way. It's hard and can be embarrassing, but it is very necessary in order to grow as an individual and achieve success. Personally, I handle failure almost as motivation. At first it may kick my butt and have me feeling down on myself, but I pull through it and learn from it so that it won't happen again. Telling my parents I had to drop that class after I was telling them how much I was going to ace that class when I enrolled in it was very disappointing to me, but they didn't yell at me or anything, they just told me to improve myself and do better because they know that I can. That helped push me in the right direction and now I feel a lot better about retaking the class in the future. In regard to this class, it really hasn't changed my perspective on failure because I have had this feeling towards failure for a while now, but this class has helped reinforce that idea into my head, so that I won't forget it. Finally, I feel more confident about taking risks though because by doing all of these assignments and learning more about how normal failure is for everyone helps me go through failure easier, thus making it easier to put yourself out there and take more risks.