Upon receiving my first big exam grade at Binghamton back, I was excited and nervous. I opened up Blackboard, checked my grade and saw a beautiful 68 radiating toward me. This was the worst grade I had received since gym class in 11th grade (the gym uniform just didn’t do me justice). Fortunately, there were a handful of poor grades to follow. Fortunately? You read that right.
‘Perfection’ is a word our society routinely preaches. We claim, “that girl has a perfect body,” or, “their relationship is perfect,” and even, “she’s a genius, her grades are absolutely perfect.” Perfection is the ultimate goal. We strive to develop a lifestyle free of flaws, a lifestyle in which very few individuals can critique and our desire for this lifestyle is only natural. Humankind is a species that continues to develop and improve for its own survival. Between biological advances, technological advances and even social advances, we challenge ourselves to be the greatest we can be and that’s necessary. The attempt to achieve perfection is the motivation that enables us to excel as a society and I applaud our pursuit of perfection in that sense. Yet, the pressures to achieve perfection in our lives have forced us to fear anything that falls short.
The first moment that I failed felt shattering. I distinctly remember calling my mother crying, to further have my roommates console me. I felt ashamed and scared. I thought ‘failure’ isn’t OK. Yes, we see motivational posters with an image of Walt Disney, along with the comfort of his rejection from Kansas City Star, and this is reassuring. But when it happens to us, we feel isolated and rejected. We treat failure like a disease and this is not productive.
I strongly believe that the moment we fail, we are one step closer to success. That moment of failure is so important, because it teaches us that the fear of failure is irrational. It takes away the anxiety that paralyzes us in our most important moments. It enables us to recognize that small failures truly provide us with no harm, only if we don’t allow them to. The moment you receive your test-failing grade back, you can either waste time to mourn, convincing yourself to think that you’re unintelligent, or you can just approach your failure from a new perspective. You can take that “F” and understand it is a microelement in the true span of your college career, and go to tutoring, or go to your professor or just ask your friend for some help.
To be ashamed of your failure is the worst thing you can do. Whether we are talking about our education or our friendships, success and failure are not independent from one another. Success is accomplished by acknowledging that perfection is unobtainable. Instead, understanding that failure isn’t the barrier to your success will in fact enable you to realistically achieve a successful lifestyle.