Making the Cut

From day one, every single student learns that doing well in elementary school means flourishing in middle school; which then means succeeding in high school; which essentially means triumphing in college; which in the end translates to acquiring a superior job and living a phenomenal life and of course ultimately making the cut. Now, if even one part of this whole complex dynamic is messed with, such as an imperfect grade of a whopping 79, then achievement is not at all possible and neither is living a well lived life. Seemingly, all that becomes possible is failure.

In reality, this isn’t at all true. But, it is what we, as students, have been blindly lead to believe.

Every day, every minute, every second, must be spent to get a good grade. Not just completing the busy work homework assigned but also mindlessly memorizing various pieces of information, all just for the test, only for the test. Oh and in case you haven’t heard, studying has been officially redefined to just memorizing various tidbits, for a high grade instead of actually learning; school has been redefined to a competition to beat kids smarter than you, so you can be the one to be admitted into a better college; meanwhile, extracurriculars have been redefined as activities to do just to be able to include additional items on resumes and most definitely not for the experience as a whole.

So, you know, you can make the cut.

Junior year is said to be especially important because those grades are the last full year ones that the college admissions see; it’s the last chance to impress. Students can be found throughout the hallway even seconds before class, repeating and repeating things over and over again in order to do well on the test to be taken in a second. Everyone crash studies because that’s the way to get a better grade and now we all only care about getting a good grade. Everyone thinks that they have to get a good grade. Because of course that’s the only way to excel in life. And to make the cut.

Failure can not, will not, should not happen.

But, what if the secret to success in life is failure?

In life, one is given the test and then taught the lesson. In school, one is taught the lesson and then given the test. In life, sometimes one fails on tests. So, I don’t understand why we are told failure can’t happen. So much pressure is placed upon high school students especially, to do phenomenal in school; to receive outstanding grades. The college application game nowadays is especially tough, with students who have grade point averages even higher than the 4.0 perfect GPA. Students who’ve been apart of all the clubs offered by their school. Students who’ve played a varsity sport every season since freshman year. But, these same students also haven’t slept very well in maybe 4 full years; they probably haven’t gone out with their friends to often, but colleges don’t know that anyway, and so long as they make the cut, they’re good. Even if they almost die along the way.

The story is that every single year college gets harder to get into, told by the guidance counselors themselves. Then there’s the additional remark about how even getting into college is easier than actually staying in college. And then about how staying in college is still easier than excelling at college so you’re able to redeem yourself as over the top for jobs.

Making the cut.

We always see little kids and how they are all over the place. They are always willing to try new things; they are naturally curious. They have creativity present within them.When something doesn’t work out for them, they might cry and such, but then they’ll get right back up and try something else until something does works. We were all like that once. Until, we went to elementary school and learned you can’t fail now because if you do, it means you’ll fail in middle school; then high school; later in college; then, ultimately life.

Students have so much that is expected of them. There’s that fact that they must always succeed. They must never fail. They must always be ahead; ahead of like everything. There is so much pressure. You have to perfect. You have to get all A+’s and nothing else. All the pressure piles up inside of you, and you’re this sealed person who isn’t allowed to let any of it out; you’re trapped and enclosed completely, entirely; there is so much steam inside of you, caused by all the pressure; the pressure you have builds up high pressure inside of you; then there’s all this steam and pressure and this and that inside of you and you literally burst, blow up, explode. And, unlike how a pressure cooker goes off, you do so violently, shattering into pieces.

What teachers taught us all early on is that success is the key to life. Success equals good; failure equals bad. That phrase that was repeated over and over again, engraved into our heads, doesn’t have to be true. It actually isn’t even true.

The key to success is failure.

People who are good at what they do, are good because they have failed before. People who succeeded in life, have failed before. We’re all so scared of failure. For no reason. Failure teaches us all lessons that couldn’t be learned otherwise. It offers a tangible, easy to reach, right there, clearly visible representation of exactly what you need to better to succeed. It offers you time for reflections, so you can see how to improve. It can and should offer you the motivation to keep you going forward. It helps you confront fear, overcoming it. It offers powerful insight about you.

Steve Jobs failed, at first. Apple’s board of directors fired him in 1985, but he overcame that obstacle of failure and he saw exactly what he could do to succeed. Michael Jordan failed, at first. He got cut from his high school basketball team, but this instance of failure motivated him to try harder and he became the second to none best pro. Thomas Edison failed, at first. He failed to have a patent for his invention, the electrographic-vote recorder, to be passed by the House of Representatives, and he used his failure to learn how to make even better devices.

This pressure that we face; that we can’t fail, we all need to overcome it. We need to embrace the fact that failure makes you a champion. One bad grade isn’t the end of all. If you learned something from it, then it actually helped you. It will help you to succeed.

To make the cut.