I’ve grown up looking at failures as a negative thing. The truth I had to learn was that our failures give more lessons than our successes.
In one of my blog posts about seeing the bigger picture of failure, I had wrote about how there was a subject I took at university where my exam marks were the life and death of passing it.
I barely passed the exam.
I didn’t pass the subject.
Now I have to take it again, but luckily it’s not going to delay when I am going to get my degree, and thanks to COVID-19, I’m not going to be on academic probation.
It was easy to start the blame game on others, but the truth was that this entire outcome was 100% my responsibility.
Since being in denial of this outcome and becoming upset about it wasn’t going to get me anywhere, the only thing I could really do was to accept it, learn from it, and move forward.
And one of the ways to move forward was to get to the root on why I didn’t pass the class, and what I should do to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Failing Forward by John Maxwell had a chapter that listed the Top 10 reasons why people fail. All of those reasons were 100% accurate to my experience.
I am going to list them and share how they all applied to why I didn’t pass one of my subjects. Of course, some has been slightly altered to relate more to the experience that I had.
1. Needed to Communicate More with My Teachers
One of the greatest obstacles that prevented me from passing this class was the lack of communication with my teacher.
Yes, there were plenty of other reasons that were beyond my control. However, looking back I shouldn’t have used that as an excuse, but instead all the more communicate with them.
I learned that accomplishing good grades in classes does not just involve academic intelligence. It also involves the ability to speak up as well. It didn’t have to always be during class discussions. There were plenty of opportunities for me to speak to the teacher personally, even though it was through video.
In the next semester, communicating with my teachers benefited me greatly, and it surprised me. It was one of those “I should’ve done this all along” moments.
Communicating with them didn’t mean becoming the teacher’s pet. It meant just simply speaking up when I didn’t understand something, or if I ever struggled with anything. There’s no need to feel embarrassed about asking for their help, they are willing to help.
It also involved being open-minded and take criticism well. It made a difference, it allowed me to improve after every assessment and test.
2. A Negative Attitude
A bit embarrassed to write about this one.
I mentioned in the post on how to lie to yourself that I used to say a lot of negative statements about myself with my studying. It had gotten to the point that I got so used to it, I ended up believing it (like a lie).
That influenced my ultimate final grade more than I thought.
One thing for sure was that being reactive and negative wasn’t going to change the outcome. I had to learn how to prevent that outcome from happening again.
Being proactive instead was more beneficial. I did acknowledge that the outcome was 100% my responsibility and the only person that can prevent it from happening again was me.
From the following semester, I did practice being more proactive rather than reactive whenever I got an assessment back where I wasn’t satisfied with my grade.
One of the ways to be proactive was to evaluate and improve my study skills. This involved stopping things that didn’t work and implemented more what did work.
Also, (mentioned in my self-talk article), another way to be proactive was to look at every challenge as an opportunity to increase my capacity.
It made a difference – my grades were better compared to the previous semester.
3. A Bad Fit
With this particular class, another contribution to why I didn’t pass it was my lack of interest in it.
Yes, like the previous reason, I needed to change my attitude, and changing it would’ve been much easier if I actually enjoyed the subject.
The class was boring for me. I lacked interest in it and it didn’t actually have much to do with my degree.
There was nothing more frustrating than to stay in a class that didn’t suit my interests. It was like wearing shoes that weren’t my size.
By the time I realized that this class wasn’t a good fit, it was too late to make a change. I should’ve realised that the class was a bad fit before the deadline to withdraw the class.
I mean, if I didn’t like the first two weeks of the subject, what made me believe that I was eventually going to enjoy all 13 weeks of it?
Obviously the way to overcome this in the next semester was to pick subjects that will interest me, and not just pick it because it would increase my credit points.
4. Lack of Focus
Obviously, nothing good can come from having a lack of focus.
I made the mistake of taking on too many commitments and having so many priorities during the semester.
When things were hectic, many mistakes were made. Many.
My time and resources were all over the place, and sadly there were times when I would go from task to task and there wasn’t even progress being made at all. As a result, none of my goals were hardly being achieved.
The following semester, I made a decision to cut back some of the commitments that I didn’t really need to do at that time. These included a lot of my volunteer commitments.
Cutting them out didn’t mean that I would never go back to it. It just meant that at that time, I needed to put it on hold until I have the time to commit to them again.
Multi-tasking was not a strength for me, it was a weakness. Having lesser commitments that following semester did help me focus on everything again. The other plus side was that my mind became a lot less cluttered.
5. Weak Commitment
Failing Forward had said this well – did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying?
That rhetorical question brought out so many realizations.
I failed because I stopped trying.
I had to admit this – I didn’t pass that subject because I simply stopped trying. More than halfway through the semester, upon seeing that my grades weren’t going really well anyway, I unconsciously gave up on trying in that class.
Even though I didn’t say out loud to myself that I am not going to try anymore, my mind had already subconsciously told me that I am going to stop trying.
I did not have the right to say that I tried my best and that was all I could do.
The brutal truth was that my level of commitment for that class wasn’t very high (especially since I didn’t find it interesting). I didn’t give it all I had. I didn’t go the extra mile. I didn’t put what would be considered my best.
That’s why the next semester, if I were to fail again, it wasn’t going to be because I stopped trying. It was going to be because I tried and tried again. This was going to be applied not just until I graduate, but also in life as well.
6. An Unwillingness to Change
One instance where this happened was that I had already accepted that the class was a bad fit. I was also already not doing so well in it anyway. I just accepted it, and then when the coronavirus happened it just gave even bigger excuses.
Failing Forward had made a point that we don’t have to love change to succeed but we have to be willing to accept it.
In that following semester, I had to make changes to my attitude and my skills. Resisting the change meant resisting my ability to not fail next time.
7. A Shortcut Mindset
My note to self – there is no shortcut to anything. There was no short way to passing that class.
Even if there was, it wasn’t going to benefit me in the long run.
And I have learned that it is very true.
There were plenty of times where I underestimated the time to complete an assignment. I never did them last minute and completed them early BUT I did still rush it.
Rushing my assignment and finishing it early was no different to rushing it and completing it last minute.
That’s why in that next semester, as always, I needed to make changes.
First, I needed to have more patience with myself. I needed to acknowledge that the small changes weren’t going to bring immediate results, and is going to take time.
Second, whenever I didn’t reach the personal standards I set for myself, I had to remember that beating myself up wasn’t going to change anything. The only way to overcome that was to forgive myself and get better the next day.
And most importantly, for each assessment and test that I had, I allocated myself the time that was required to work on it. I didn’t rush through it since there are no shortcuts. Each assessment was going to be hard work and it wasn’t going to be high quality if I rushed through them.
8. Relying on My Passion Alone
I am passionate about my degree, but I had learned that passion wasn’t enough.
Just because I am passionate about law, it didn’t mean that everything was going to be easy. I couldn’t avoid the exams and assessments, and I don’t even love just one second of it.
And also, being passionate about law didn’t mean that I was passionate about the process of it. I’ll admit, when I first started law, I got so excited. Shortly after, I just got frustrated with the workload that came with it. The honeymoon phase went by really quickly and the initial excitement wore off.
That then impacted the grade that I received for that particular subject.
I did end up acknowledging that no matter how passionate we are about something, we still have to push through all the boring stuff. There is always going to be one obstacle after another, and they are going to be unavoidable.
Yes, I do need passion because it’s important for me to be interested in what I am studying. However, accomplishing my desired grades required much more than passion. I also had to accept that I was not going to love every second of the process.
9. Response to Criticism
Another big contribution to my outcome was when I avoided looking back at my assignments because I was afraid of the criticism.
This was one of my biggest mistakes. I was very reactive on any of the criticism that I would receive, and it didn’t turn out well.
That’s why in the following semester, and all the semesters after that, I pretty much forced myself to look at the feedback. I pushed myself to read every piece of feedback. As it turned out, it was actually very beneficial.
The feedback whether it was good or bad, it helped me improve my skills, my work quality, and it helped me meet the expectations of the subject. The criticism helped me to do better for next time.
And it wasn’t like the one giving the feedback was just some random person that didn’t know what they were talking about, it came from the teacher, the one who had read hundreds more of the same assessment.
10. No Goals
This is a bit of a unusual one – but I actually didn’t set any goals for myself with this class.
Because I didn’t have a goal, I wasn’t able to reflect on my current habits and skills to see whether or not it was working.
Yes we need the system, but we need the goal to know whether our system is working effectively.
I did end up setting a goal to pass all the classes obviously, but also to exceed my personal expectations.
I did put a system filled with key habits, and whenever I noticed that I wasn’t getting my preferred marks, I did make changes to my system. It was easier to spot my weaknesses and make adjustments accordingly when I actually had my goal.
Working on Our Weaknesses
The ultimate lesson is that everyone has weaknesses, but it’s our responsibility to work on those weaknesses. We can turn our weaknesses into strengths.
The reason why I focused on sharing my experience in this post is because this is my way of staying accountable to the changes that I made and the continuous journey of turning those weaknesses into strengths.
We can make the small changes to our lives one day at a time. Even though one day of small changes doesn’t make a noticeable difference, it may surprise us over a long period of time.
We can change our response to failure. We can take a bad experience and turn it into a good experience. We can turn our weaknesses into strengths.
Book(s) this post was inspired by:
(not sponsored in any way!)
Disclaimer: If you think that any of what I had written was good, the credit actually belongs to the one whose book was the inspiration for this post. If there’s anything on here that you think is quite stupid, that’s 100% blame on me 🙂
Share This Blog Post Here:
Related Articles:
New Year, New WHY… Stop Using Willpower!
The Best Ways to Set Goals! (it will change the way you look at your goals)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hi, this is Lauren! I’m a law grad from Melbourne, Australia. On laurenbarri.com, I create content on all things personal development, productivity, self-care, and habits! I am super passionate about these topics because of how they helped me in all areas of my life, and I want to share it with others!
CONNECT with ME!! 🗯
Instagram:
@laurenlbarri (blog Instagram)
If you got value from this blog in any way, it would mean the world if you could show your support on my Buy Me a Coffee platform! (otherwise I am just really happy that you’re here 😊)
