Celebrating Failure Week#13

The quote by Thomas Edison is one I have repeated many times to myself, as well as to friends who are experiencing failure. In fact, to go along with your picture of baseball, the great Babe Ruth who was famous for hitting home runs, but he also held the record for the most strikeouts – until another baseball great broke the record – Mickey Mantle. Ruth’s mantra was: “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” I have spent my life with that quote seared in my brain.

Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed

n  I didn’t listen to my adviser. I was told that two courses would be sufficient for my first term at UF, but I thought I knew better – thus, I have struggled to get all my assignments completed, a position in which I have never been. In fact, I haven’t done many of them because I put myself in a situation that made me choose between assignments from different courses.

Tell us what you learned from it

n  Listen! It would not have hurt me to only take two, and then once I got into the semester I could have determined at that time whether I could handle a full time job along with 12 credit hours at UF. Instead, I did it “my way.” I decided to take 12 credit hours and if it was too much I would back it down next semester. Wrong decision. I learned that instead of listening to my adviser and been proactive, I am now in a reactive state (more like panic) as the semester comes to a close.

Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure

n  Michael Jordan said exactly the way I feel about failure: “I missed more than 9000 shots in my career. 26 times I was trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” There is nothing fun about failure. What I have learned over the years is failure is my teacher, not my undertaker. Failure has delayed my success, but not defeated it. Along my journey, failure has been my detour, but never my dead end. I have stumbled, and gotten back up. What happened yesterday should no longer matter except to learn from it. Life always offers you a second chance, and it is called tomorrow. As Scarlet O’Hara said in the last line of the Civil War novel, Gone with the Wind, while thinking of ways to get Rhett Butler back: “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

So, now I have to get back on track and move closer to my dreams and goals. After all, tomorrow is another day (but I have assignments due today!)