I Feel Like A Failure
But I Will Overcome It
Failure is a feeling that we all hate. We put all these expectations of ourselves only to fall short and not reach them. No matter how many times we experience it, feeling it still sucks.
I have felt this way for quite a while now. Let me tell you it doesn’t get easier and I will never get used to it.
I recently started University and I am studying a career that is quite hard. I knew I had to prepare for all the changes that were going to happen but I never expected I would struggle so much.
Classes lasting 90 minutes with my sad attention span, not having a single friend to talk to during the first few weeks, and the worst of all not knowing how to study made me feel pathetic and question if I was even good enough.
That feeling only increased with my first exam week. I got a 30% on my first exam, I never had such a low grade before and the next exams were not better. My highest grade was a 75%, I felt awful.
When I told my parents about my exams, they just said that it was because they were my first exams and I was still getting used to living in another country plus adjusting to university life. I was glad they were so understanding but I still felt horrible.
My parents were paying not only for university but also a dorm and my food. Even with a scholarship everything was still rather expensive. To make matters worse I had to have a certain average to keep my scholarship so the pressure to do better was eating away at me.
The second set of exams were better but I still failed 2 exams. The worst was that I felt so confident about one of them that failing it crushed me.
I was also struggling hard with one class. The day we had the last exam before finals was a day that I will never forget. I went into the exam hoping I would pass it and make my parents proud.
I closed my computer with tears in my eyes, yet another failure.
What am I doing wrong? Am I not good enough?
This made me feel useless and a failure of a daughter. My dad tried to console me saying that even if I did not reach the average, that he knew I was doing my best.
Deep inside me, I knew I wasn’t doing my best
I told my dad that maybe I should just quit the class and maybe take it next year. He told me that he struggled similarly with one of his classes, but that he didn’t give up and continued and he managed to pass. That gave me enough motivation to continue.
When final exams finally arrived, I decided that I was going to stop feeling like a failure and start doing my best to make not only my parents proud but also myself.
I needed to prove myself I could do this and that this is the path I was meant to walk.
The first day was tough because I had 2 exams that day. Even thought I was so close, I failed the first exam — while I was frustrated I could not wallow in sadness and decided to study for the next exam with a couple of friends.
Thanks to that motivation I managed to pass all the remaining exams with a mark of 80% or above. The last one was the class that I struggled with the most.
I went into the classroom determined to pass this exam. I was sweating bullets because we only had 40 minutes to finish it. When we were finally done, I was nervous. I didn’t know my results but I at least knew that I did try my best.
After a couple of hours, I saw something that made me so happy.
I managed to pass the exam.
After combining everything, my average did not reach the one needed to keep the scholarship, while they did not take it away they did reduce it.
I still feel bad about that, I hate having my parents spend more money because of me, but I am happy that I at least made them proud by passing all my classes.
Even if you feel like a failure now, you should not give up. I didn’t give up and I managed to grow more as a person.
Nothing in life is easy and we all struggle, but the difference between those who succeed and those to fail is that the ones who fail gave up.
No matter how many times you fall, what matters is that you get up and continue.
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
Thank you for reading so far.
See you later alligators.
