One time in this semester where I failed was in my
mechanical systems class. More specifically, it was our second exam in the
course. On our first exam I did very well, scoring a 97. In the time leading up
to Exam 2 I thought that it would be no problem to do well on it, so I
neglected studying until about 30min before the exam. However, this strategy
did not work out well at all, I knew very little when I took the exam and ended
up scoring a 52. While I still didn’t get the lowest grade in the class, I obviously
was not very happy after receiving this grade. What I learned from this was
that studying for the first time immediately before the exam is not a
successful strategy and if I want to do better, I would need to start studying
a day or two in advance.
I think that failure is very important and it the greatest
teacher. While failing is never fun and can be very embarrassing, its an
important thing to go through because you can learn so much from it. My friend,
Joe, from UNF has a saying that he says quite frequently: “you don’t learn from
success, you learn from failing and seeing the wrong way of doing things”. Whenever
I fail, I don’t necessarily get discouraged, I usually take time to reflect and
see what I did wrong. Depending on the scenario I’ll use this information going
forward and give it another try. But I don’t let it get me down, while it can
be defeating, if you keep your head up and keep moving forward no failure will
be able to defeat you. The most positive thing you can do after failing is to
find out where you went wrong or what you did wrong and ensuring you don’t do
it again. However, if you fail and don’t change what you’re doing or let it
keep you down then you won’t end up learning anything and it will be a waste of
a failure. I think this class has definitely changed my perspective on failure.
I would definitely be inclined to go out and try new things and take new risks
since no matter how it goes, I know I will take something away from it. Additionally,
I’ve learned that failure is ingrained into the nature of entrepreneurship and
there is nothing you can do to get away from it; you must learn to embrace it
and learn from it.
Hello Matt! Reading your post really made me think I was reading about myself. While the circumstances of my failure was not as extreme as your own, I had a similar experience. I also did well with a high A on my first exam in a class, but then got a C on the second exam because I didn’t properly study. I hadn’t studied much on the first exam because it was all intuitive, to me at least. With the second exam, however, I thought I could also put minimal effort in studying and that bit me in the butt. It really just teaches me that I have to change my habits if I want different results.
ReplyDeleteHey Matt,
ReplyDeleteI have done the same thing where I started studying the day of the exam and then ended up doing terribly on it. For me, that is more likely to be on the first exam and I correct my mistakes and study more for the second one. I agree that failure is one of the best ways to learn.