How to Fail like a Champion
It’s not the winning that counts, but how you play the game
I don’t particularly like to fail. Does anyone? Failure says to us, ‘You are not good enough. You haven’t reached the minimum standard.’
Or does it?
Right now I’m at the start of a big research project, an optional fourth year after I completed my undergraduate degree in 2018. This research year, or Honours, is designed to give you a little taste of the PhD life, without the full commitment. Sorts the wheat from the chaff. Corrals the weak animals away from the herd. That sort of thing. Plus, Honours is usually a prerequisite for a PhD down here, if you still haven’t had the spirit knocked out of you by then.
Anyway, the grade for my first assignment for the year came back today. I did badly. Not failure-bad, but quite bad for me. I’ve worked really hard to maintain my high GPA because frankly, as a mature age student, I don’t have the time, money, or energy to mess around. I’m also really hard on myself academically because I know what I’m capable of. So when I did worse than I expected, I felt pretty rotten.
I felt like a failure.
We’d been warned about this year. Apart from some sporadic on-campus classes — of which this assignment was a part — the bulk of the workload…
