Failure is OK

This post is not a self help or a oh wow me. It is about how failure is an important part of growing up and it is important that we learn how to cope, pick yourself up and move on. I really believe that things happen for a reason and it forms part of who we are and the paths that we take. If we don’t fail then many of those paths that we are meant to follow do not open up.

My story goes back to my school days. I am the last of five children and always felt that I was always being compared to my siblings. Rightly or wrongly, that is how I felt. Specially my nearest brother to me, we were only one year apart in school years, though 2 years in actuality. I was born in August, so the youngest in my year group, my brother in September and so the eldest. I felt that I was being compared to him through out my school years. I managed to get a decent set of O’level grades and continued into 6th form to study Pure and Applied maths, Geography, Textile and Dress and General Studies. I strange mixture, I loved maths under my former maths teacher, who became my friend, and I also wanted to become a fashion designer hence the A’level Textiles. As I mentioned in a previous post, during my lower sixth year I was involved in an accident and I lost the top of my left thumb. This had a massive impact on my ability to sew and it knocked me sideways in what I wanted to do. The other thing that happened that year was I met my first long term boyfriend. He was a friend of my sisters and was 21 to my 16. 

The combination of boyfriend, he had a car and everything, and my loss of confidence after my accident meant that my final year heading towards my exams was not quite what they should have been. I went to many different university and got good offers from some of the best. However, it was not meant to be. On my 18th birthday the A’level results came out and I had monumentally failed. There really wasn’t any recovering or simply going for my second or third choice uni. I sat and felt that everything had been taken away from me. I had worked hard and I thought I had done enough, but it turns out I hadn’t. I felt like I had failed myself, my parents and everyone was right that I was the stupid one in the family.

Faced with this at the age of 18 was one of that hardest challenges in my life. What do you do when everything changes. Luckily I was still talking to my maths teacher and she told me if I wanted to get a degree I would probably need to go via a different route. I went back clearing and looked for any options to get me to university. The only option I found was to enrol on a HND mathematics course with the option to transfer onto a degree course at the end. This was at the then Thames Polytechnic which went on to become the University of Greenwich. 

So this one monumental failure had some major consequences. I never failed anything after this event, or at least tried my hardest not to. If I failed it was not because I did not try. I went on to get a distinction in my HND and on to a degree. I went to Rolls Royce during my year industry and was sponsored in my final year. I achieved a first class degree, was first in my year and obtained the IBM aware for computing. I was then invited to study for a PhD. But I suppose the biggest path it made me follow was to my husband. If I hadn’t failed I would not necessarily have met my hubby, my kids would not have been born and I would not have had the many life experiences I have been fortunate to have had. 

So what is my post about, well failure is on the whole inevitable. We should always try and avoid it but it there are going to be times when we will fail. We should teach our children to do our best, but also what to do when you do fail. It is about how to deal with disappointment, what to do next, how to re-evaluate, but the one thing you don’t do is give up. I have had many other failures since, maybe not as big as this one, but still. I have learnt that what ever happens life still goes on and those failures or life changes are what make us who we are. It may seem that everything is terrible when you are going through it, but I believe the eventual outcome is usually better and makes us a better person.

Thanks

Lois