Celebrating Failure

This semester has been a bit of a strain with several changes in my life happening all at one time.  First, my mother left and went back to North Carolina to let me and my wife learn how to be parents to my newborn daughter while we both juggle school and work.  Then, my family and I took a trip to North Carolina for my nephew's graduation just to return back home with news that my grandfather in Jacksonville had passed.  So, my family and I took a road trip to Jacksonville for the funeral.  Finally, my job has lost about 12 Airmen with only about four replacements which has put a tremendous amount of stress on my workload and has resulted in me working late almost everyday.  I explain these events to paint the picture of the root cause to the stress I have experienced this Summer semester.  My first test in Retail Sales and Management was a disaster and I was really disappointed in receiving a 62% (124 of 200 points) because, despite all the of the stressors, I devoted several hours of study time for the test.  I wanted to give up because I didn’t know how much harder I could have studied and still successfully manage all of the other priorities in my life.  But one thing that stood in my way was the pressure that I put on myself to flawlessly manage all of the obstacles in my life.

  Going into the second test was less stressful because I had already experienced failure in this class.  As funny as it sounds, experiencing failure feels new for each class that I take because I go into each class with an expectation of how well I will do based upon several factors such as how well I understand the material, the teaching skills of the professor, the personality of the professor, etc.  In order to bring my grade to an A- in the class I would need to score at least 96% on the second test.  Well, I had just returned from my grandfather’s funeral and I asked the teacher for an extension in which she was gracious enough to give me a two-day extension.  This was a relief because I had a few more days to study and I was very confident that would be prepared to take on the challenge for this test.  My score was shown immediately and this time I received an 84%.  This time I was not as disappointed because I had to realize that the bigger accomplishment was being able to manage work, attend my grandfather’s funeral, and balance family time with my wife and daughter, as well as still get a B on the test.  Now, I will be preparing for my final exam in MAR3231 and I am not afraid at all of failing because at this point I am not putting so much pressure on myself to perfectly mange all of the stressors in my life.  I am going into this test with a different mindset because I realize that all I can do is fully dedicate myself towards my goals with a realistic expectation of the outcome.  I am going to dig deep and give it my all on this test and not worry about failing because if I don't consume myself with failing then in the end I will not fail.  I learned that there will be times where distractions and obstacles make things harder but just because I didn’t reach my original goal of getting an A doesn’t mean that I didn’t succeed.  Right now I have a B in the class and confident that I can raise my grade to at least a B+ as my final grade.