Accepting failure makes you a better person
By Julia Mae Jorgensen

Sensitive ones close your eyes. I am about to get profane. I am going to use the F-word. Yep, that’s right … failure.

By definition, failure means the act of falling short or an unsuccessful person or thing.

Kind of depressing when you think about it, but the truth is this; life’s little failures get you from one success to another. Because you have survived falling short, you have triumphed over one of life’s toughest battles — the one against your own limitations.

Not long ago, I sat in a Sid Richardson lecture hall to take part in an astronomy class. I went there every day with the idea that I would be checking off a UCR credit and passing a class with little trepidation. What I didn’t know was that at the end of the semester, I would know absolutely nothing about astronomy but discover the greatest lesson of my college life. Failure happens, and yeah it stinks, but it won’t kill you.

What I and many others forget to see is that sometimes life isn’t fair. Sometimes things just don’t go the way you want them to. Although the shock and disappointment that comes with failure may stop you dead in your tracks, you have to keep going. The way to beat your shortcomings is to get back up each time you fall and do it all over again.

It is pounded into our heads all our lives that we are only successful if we achieve everything for which we aim. There is something noble about failing that we all overlook. In short, you don’t get the sweet without the bitter.

I failed that astronomy class. It was the first time in my life I had failed anything. It wasn’t because I was lazy or didn’t try. It wasn’t because I didn’t go to class or didn’t communicate with the professor. It was because I just didn’t get it.

We all walk around thinking we are unshakable, that there is no subject, person or event that can beat us. But, there is. There always will be that one thing that can and will get us. That’s the way fate works. It constantly tests us and tries us until we persevere against it.

I’m still standing, and I’ll be standing at the end of the semester, even if I fail every class I’m taking.

Just as our world encourages us to not be afraid to take risks, we should not be afraid to fail.

Failure is, in its own peculiar way, a success story of survival. If you’ve never failed anything, you’ve never survived anything.