You can’t get an A for everything in life. But if you learn a lesson from the tests you flunk, you’ll succeed every time you fail. By Cath Jenkin
Remember being in school and being terrified of flunking that Science test? Hi, I’m Cath and I flunked a Science test in 1992. Yes, it still haunts me. No, never did tell my parents.
I can remember the crinkles of the test paper. There was an animated drawing of a snake that I found both cute and irritating. If I close my eyes and think about failures in my life, the image of that snake is the first thing I see.
Then I see the big red pen-scribbled “E”. For me, that “E” was a failure and it stung like a bee on a mission.
If there’s one thing that makes us human, it’s that we so desperately try to cling to a sense of self-preservation. We are scared to fail. We’re frightened of being wrong and terrified we’ll be found out as a flunker.
It was the first time I’d ever failed at something that I knew other people would know or care about. Luckily for me, we had two tests that term, and I paid the most attention I have ever paid in a class during Science. So much so, that I aced it home with a great looking little D. Relief.
Oh, by the way, I’m terrible at Science. I once set my uniform alight with a Bunsen burner and upended a jug of boiling water over myself in a laboratory. So a D, for me, was a home free sign.
That fear of failure doesn’t leave you when you grow up. It worsens, because there’s so much more on the line. Your job, your love life, your friendships and the other big-ticket elements that make up your happiness. It’s a fear of failure that stops us from trying new things, but you can’t avoid failure that way. At some point, you will be awful at what you do.
Whatever the reasons, it’s not some dramatic finale. It’s going to feel like it at the time but, if you try and look for a 12-year old you within, you’ll figure out that it’s just an opportunity to learn.
Fast-forward to 35-year old me, who has just been told she didn’t really do the thing she was supposed to and that frankly, she missed the mark completely. Cue panic, cue swarming self-doubt, cue investigating alternative careers. Yes, really.
Except the 12-year old me remembered something after spending a day in the doldrums. I still had the opportunity to try again. So after much handwringing and warbling voice notes to dear friends and mentors, I sat bolt upright in the classroom of life and listened intently. So intently, that I ended up learning a bunch of things I had previously ignored or found downright boring.
If you’re lucky, you’ll learn early on in life to divide criticism and feedback into two little boxes. You’ll learn the subtle difference between the two.
If I go through my boxes and files of mementos, I won’t find that science test anywhere. I know this because the hotheaded 12-year old me threw it away in a huff the first moment I could. The 35-year old me wishes I hadn’t.
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