Celebrating Failure

1. Tell us about a time that you failed. 
  • Earlier this semester we were tasked with asking five close family members, friends, or people who know us best what they think makes us different. We had to record interviews with them and upload them with  our What's Your Secret Sauce blog post. I don't exactly remember what was going on that week, but I remember that it was a super busy week and I was feeling overwhelmed and a bit scattered. Early in the week I started asking family members to send me their video recordings, but it proved to be pretty difficult to get them to record and send me their videos. It was frustrating to have to wait on them because my ability to complete the assignment was completely out of my control. On Friday, once I finally had all of my videos compiled, I uploaded them and tried to turn in the assignment, only to find out that I missed the deadline by about an hour. I had completely forgotten about the 12 pm deadline. I usually get my blog posts up early in the week, so as not to risk missing the deadline, but this time it was out of my control because I was waiting on my family and friends to give me their videos. 
2. Tell us what you learned from it. 
  • I learned two lessons from this experience. This first is that I have to find a better way to stay on top of my deadlines. That is the only time I have missed a deadline in this class. I haven't let it happen again because it's been ingrained in my memory to turn things in before Friday. Now I give myself a mental deadline of Thursday night so that I don't even have a chance of turning anything in late on Friday. The second lesson I learned is that it's okay to mess up sometimes. I have some Type A tendencies, and the thought of not getting a perfect grade overall because of that one mistake really bothers me, especially since I did all of the work and got some awesome feedback from my family and friends. But, it also taught me to be more careful and mindful of making the same mistake in the future. 
3. Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure. 
  • For me, what makes failure so frustrating is that I know I can always do better. Sometimes I project failure onto myself because I hold myself to such high standards. Many times in college I have missed out on opportunities to go out with friends or doing something fun because I put so much pressure on myself to get perfect grades and continually do better. Even though failure sucks, it's also a necessary part of the process. Nobody starts out being perfect. It takes time and lots of learning from failures to achieve something really great. Overcoming failure is what makes the feeling of accomplishment so great. I'm not sure this class has changed my perspective on failure in any way. I'm probably just as risk averse as I was prior to taking this class, but I've definitely learned a lot about myself and my work ethic along the way. 

Comments

  1. Madylin McConnellApril 17, 2020 at 10:46 AM

    Hi Grace,
    I feel your frustration with this post because something similar happened to me. I did my assignment on time but forgot to submit the link on the A part of the assignment, so I didn’t get my points for parts B or C either. I found this experience extremely frustrating also because I did all the work but one minor error meant I lost out on the points and all the other things I could have been doing with my time. I agree that this experience did make me to always double-check to make sure I turned it in.
    ~Mady

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  2. WilliamolApril 20, 2020 at 1:11 AM

    I totally understand what you were going through... I went through the same process and missed a couple assignment because I was totally busy with something else. Choosing your schedule ahead of time is hard because you really never know fully just how much time each class if going to take on a given week. I like you actually learned it quick and decided to change your own due date, that was smart enough. I really like your take on failure and what you learned, thanks for sharing!

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