Failure is something that everyone at some point will meet paths with, and for high-achieving students, that seems rather contradictory. Academic failure comes in many shapes and sizes – whether it is performing not-so-well on your first test of the semester or not doing as well as you thought you would on the final. While failure is always unfortunate, the silver lining to it is that it isn’t final, and here are some ways to proactively deal with failure.
Put Things into Perspective
Many high-achieving students tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves to do well, and I, too, am guilty of doing so. While it may serve as a motivator for some, when we do not perform as well as we had hoped, we tend to blow that failure out of proportion. A great way to put things into perspective is understanding how much each assignment/test/exam is worth; if you happen to mess up on a test that is worth 10%, you could be able to make it up on the final that is worth 30%. Even on the off chance that you do not perform as well on the final, chances are that you still have four other courses that can potentially mitigate the unfortunate result from that one final. When we get so caught up in every mistake that we make, we tend to miss the big picture, and the big picture is a more accurate representation of how we’re really doing. Consequently, putting our failures and shortcomings into perspective allows us to take a step forward and perform better.
Learn from Your Mistakes
After performing not-so-well on a test, it almost feels natural to ‘get over’ your mark on the test by binging a season of Grey’s Anatomy, and while I am not opposed to the idea of binging Grey’s Anatomy, there is an integral step that’s missing in between.
Reviewing what you got wrong or failed to do on an assignment is very important because it provides you with the chance to understand why and how you missed out on some marks. In many courses, material builds on previously learned material, so by reviewing mistakes, you are then able to better grasp concepts, which will further help you in the completion of that course. Reviewing your work in more essay-based courses also allows you to reach out to your teaching assistants and professors for help and advice, which can also help you tackle future assignments in the course.
In our world where there is a heavy fixation on numbers (i.e. maintaining an average), every mistake can appear to be fatal, but that simply is not the case. Mistakes are there to be made, but mistakes, also, are there to be learned from. Failure is not final, and despite what it may appear to be, it won’t be the end of the world. Always remember to embrace the process, and if at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again.