Argumentative Essays

Everybody makes mistakes. Failure can be a motivation, for it drives you to have a bigger passion for your desired goal. Success and failure have a relationship in which you can learn from your mistakes but later succeed.

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Failure can be a very difficult thing to cope with. It can be something that makes you or breaks you. I have learned that failure is what defines a person; it shows your motivation to bounce back when things get rough. I have learned from my failure instead of dwelling on it and making myself weaker.

The article “To Err Is Wrong” by Roger Von Oech, “In Praise of the F Word” by Mary Shelly, and “Zero” by Paul Logan are inspirational to many people because it shows them that failure is not a roadblock and you can learn from your mistakes. Failure plays a significant role as a motivational tool, direction, and strength to help students to be successful in the class and in the future. The word failure has been shown in several cases to cause motivation. One of the cases is in the article “ The Praise Of The Word” when Mary Sherry told her son that his teacher was going to “flunk” him (Sherry98) .

One major part of being unable to recover from failure is the inability to accept the fact that one has failed. Recognizing failure is important because without the recognition, there is no improving on a failed experience. In not recognizing failure as a problem, one is given a false view of themselves where they never fail, however in “The essential Guide for Recovering from Failure”, Guy Winch, Ph.D, shows the reader the problem with not recognizing or understanding the concept of failure.

Failure is widely viewed as negative. While this portrayal of failure is justified, it does not tell the whole story. Failure is a learning experience because it explains the errors made, and then the person figures out how to fix the mistakes. The way individuals respond to the failure is a great way to evaluate his/her character. There

Having siblings can be both a good thing and bad thing. In “Seven Ways Your Siblings May Have Shaped You” By Lindsay Lyon the article was about different situations that I or anyone of us may have experienced when having a sibling in life. “How Our Siblings Shape Us” by Naomi Schaefer Riley is about both the good and bad things about having a sibling and what I or you might or may have experienced. Whether you have an older sibling or a younger sibling, scientific facts, as well as personal experience, show that having a sibling can strongly affect you in the long run. Some of the things that can or may strongly affect me, you and your siblings are success, relationships, and rivalries.

Failure is a process that can determine one’s character. It is a process needed in order to be successful. Through life people approach failure in various manners. For example, there are people who sulk, people who pretend, people who repeat, and

Failure is all around us, but so is success. Both result from one thing, setting goals. I set goals to achieve a sense of accomplishment when they are completed. From doing my homework every night to getting 100 percent on a test, goals help me focus my time on the activities that I must accomplish. Taking responsibility for your own failures is difficult. My failure makes me wonder what could I have done differently. I was forced to ask myself that question after Cross Country Districts Junior year.

In life, no matter the quest, if you aim to succeed you must first fail. Failure, one of life’s profound professors, allows us to utilize our mistakes in a way that will create positive results in the future, that’s if you let it.

Hanna Blochs article “Failure is an Option” elucidates that failures are only failures if you can’t analyze, reassess, and learn from them. Bloch’s first argument is that success meant “to come after,” so we must fail in order to learn to appreciate success while still being alert that failure is imminent. Bloch quotes Pete Athans, an experienced explorer who reached the world’s highest peak seven times. He says, “Failure gives you a chance to refine your approach. You’re taking risks more and more intelligently” (2).

Because of the recurring fear of failure or defeat, many Americans are too afraid to ever try something new with the idea of defeat always close by. However, it is essential that those overtaken by the fear of failure learn to surpass fear and step outside themselves. After this frightening step is taken, failure is sometimes inevitable, but trying is the most momentous element of it all. Trying something new, failing, but somehow persevering clearly depicts how any and all Americans can overcome their fear of failure.

People fail every day. People can fail in a test, work assignment, or a promise. Failure exposes people as imperfect beings trying to act perfectly. This does not mean success is never attainable for a human, rather success relies on the actions failure provides. People never strive to fail; otherwise, people will never start.

According to the article “7 Ways Your Siblings May Have Shaped You” written by Lindsay Lyon, siblings: buffer stress, provide good practice, help raise our vulnerability to mental-health issues, raise the chance of bad behavior, inspire us to be different, increase romantic jealousy, and impact a person’s love life. Siblings play a vital role in the way a person will act and carry themself in their day to day life. 80% of children today grow up with a brother, sister, or both. Something that is interesting to me is that children are more likely to grow up with a sibling than to grow up with a father.

The word “failure”, by definition, is the condition of not achieving the desired end or ends. However, this standard definition does not come close to summing up the countless other meanings of failure. Every person, regardless of status, color, or sex, has had to deal with this issue at least once in their lifetime. Even so, each person’s definition of it can vary depending on their personal experiences. The interpretations of failure may differ, but failure itself involves not putting forth effort, being a disappointment, or not succeeding in a task.