Failure In College

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 allows people to grow and learn from their mistakes. Without failure I would have never been able to learn my true identity and overcome the adversity I had faced. I have faced failure in many forms and each time it affects me and I grow from it, progressing into someone who can defeat all obstacles. I have come to appreciate failure because it has developed me into the person I am today. There is one failure that truly affected me and it was when I was not accepted into the All State Choir.

The day was October 8th, 2014. I hardly played. One school day, my 5th teacher, Ms. Smit said, “flyers for the basketball team on the table” ordinarily I took one. Kids from 4th, 5th, and 6th grade came to try out for the team. After tryouts, a paper next to the nurse's office was hung up. The paper sheet named those who had made the team. Surprisingly, I made the team, most likely from my height. I felt like I shouldn’t have made the team. At the time, I barely started to play basketball. I went to the practices at school and tried to make myself a little bit better, since a tournament was about to begin in a few weeks.

Failure is something that all people encounter in their lives. In some situations failure can break a person or make a person, meaning a person can fail at something and just simply give up. Others will fail and that failure can give them the inspiration to try harder to one day achieve their goal. I'm the type of person to fail and work harder until I am content. As my championship baseball coach would say "What’s our motto? Never give up!"

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.

Quite often you hear that we do not grow without failure; that failure is what teaches us a new skill and how to then succeed. I was not familiar with the quote, “adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant,” by Horace, however I think this quote is true. To me, this means that when someone has some kind of disadvantage, that person can use the challenge to his advantage through self-reflection, determination, and hope. Every person faces an obstacle, usually many and of various degrees of challenge, and although you cannot control the situation, you can control your reaction. Those of us that learn from adversity take our time to figure out how to approach the problem in a new manner. We recognize that one barrier is not a reason to abandon our course. We think outside the box for how to overcome the challenge. We learn from the first failure and we regroup for the next approach. Failure teaches you how to define yourself rather than how others define you. All four of the

I was confident. I was a better basketball player and everyone knew it. Each day after tryouts I told my dad "I've got it this time." Needless to say, once again my name wasn't on the list. I was so dejected that I couldn't even look my dad in the eye when he picked me up. That night, I went straight to bed and skipped dinner. I later found out both my mom and dad silently cried because they knew how hurt I was. My friends kept telling me I should have made the team, but that didn't change the fact that they were playing and I just had to sit in the stands and watch night after night. I went to every single game that season, and supported my friends; all the while feeling empty because I couldn't be out there with

Failure is a missed opportunity, poor test grade, or missing the game-winning goal. Depending on its scale, certain failures can cause one individual to cry and another to shake it off. In school, one individual's failure is another one's success. I experience failure like this but at a different scale because to me, failure is more than disappointing my parents or teachers. I feel like I am defined by that failure, and that it will never vanish. This particular failure defines me and will stay with me throughout my school years.

Failure can feel devastating when you are living through the experience. I felt this way during one of the greatest failures in my life, failing to qualify for State History Day in my junior year of high school. This was my third History Day competition and I had previously qualified for State. While I entered the event with confidence from previous competitions and a final product that I thought was close to perfect, experiencing failure this time taught me how to strive for the best that I can be, persevere through tough times, and that sometimes your best isn't always the best.

I was about halfway through my sophomore year of high school. I was on the varsity soccer team and we were having a terrific season. We were hoping to make a run for state, which had never been done by the boys team since its inception 10 years ago. I did not receive a lot of playing time over the course of the season, but I was integral to the depth and strength of the team. At first, I had to prove to myself and my coaches that I could be an asset to the varsity team. I stepped up my intensity during the junior varsity games and focused all my energy during practice to make sure my efforts would not go unnoticed. My hard work and determination paid off and as a result, I was asked to join in the varsity practices. It was a great opportunity

How would we know what success looks like if we have never failed? If failure was not an option no one would know what they are capable of. Failure pushes people to work harder than they ever had just to get a taste of success. I have failed. However, it has been a triumphant failure because I have learned so much more than just having it handed to me.

The game was at the Highland Park Rec Center for a house-league basketball season. Going into the season opener, I was excited to play the game expecting my team to win. I thought my team had the potential to be really good. Our team started the game playing well, but we ended up losing by a lot and it was not fun. However, that simple loss changed me. That simple loss changed my perspective on basketball.

As the world and society put a certain image that goes along with failure people have become fearful and staggered to take risks and develop new and different ideas that aren’t always the typically in the box demean way of life. As we encounter our own journeys in life there is no wrong path that we take, everyone has their own way of going through things from the failures that set us back in life open new and different doors that could have better opportunities. Failure is not the end it is only the beginning to a new way of life, sometimes we drown in seas of relief from the knowledge that we failed our selves Failure teaches us as individuals to become more passionate and understanding towards others then encounter simpler fiats.

Failure is something that we cannot go through life without experiencing. The best thing about failure is that failure can be used as a great learning experience to improve upon things in our lives and career. Using failure as a learning tool is dependent upon the person and how they view it as well as how they use it. Failure is a matter of perspective and the lessons in failure are important aspects towards growth and development. If we did not experience failure there wouldn’t be opportunities for learning. Failure can teach us about ourselves as well as provide an understanding for our

Traditionally, failure is seen as a negative concept and is defined as lacking success. I, on the other hand, try to put a positive spin on everything in life. I see failure as an obstacle that is experienced by all, but it does not define an individual. Failure in essence will force an individual to be more receptive to their surroundings and actions and also will force an individual to mature. Looking back on my childhood years I can now pinpoint the areas where I failed and I can confidently say that I have grown and prospered due to those failures. The three major failures I have experienced were my attention deficit issues which affected my ability to succeed in school, my anti-social habit that I let consume my early years, and my