Assignment 26A – Celebrating Failure
1)
A time that I failed.
In my eyes, I failed when I did not meet the goal of making
the NCAA championship meet this year. I trained all year to try and swim the
fastest I could and to qualify for this meet. I swam at SEC’s to try and
qualify and again at Last Chance meet in attempt to qualify. I was initially trying
to qualify in the 200-yard freestyle but ended up not swimming it at SEC’s and focusing
on the 100-yard butterfly and trying to qualify the relay.
2)
What I learned from it.
Although I did not make the meet, I did a best time in the
event that I was least focused on and least expected to, in the 200-yard
butterfly. I was actually closest individually to qualifying for NCAA in this
event in the end. I have not swum this event much and have always been a little
afraid of training for it as it seemed a bit of a stretch. However, I learnt
that I have more potential than I think and that if I trained for the 200-yard
butterfly, and use what I learnt from racing it previously to improve, I can
get better at it for next year.
3)
Reflection on what I think about failure
Failure is a learning curve, if you don’t take something
from it then it really was failure, but if you learned from it, or took
something away from it, then it benefited you and helped you to grow. My
personality of always wanting to do things to the best of my ability means that
I don’t always handle failure in the best way. However, disappointments with
swimming over the years, and being a college student has helped this. The start
of this class we spoke about risk, but in the sense that successful
entrepreneurs are not taking ridiculous risks, but more calculated ones. This
class showed me that some risks can be beneficial, sometimes you just need to be
able to take the first step out of your comfort zone. This made me think more
about this types of risks I take everyday, it made me want to plan, carefully
think out, and evaluate risks, and take more as they could so easily benefit
me. This class made me think about risks, and not be scared of them, thinking
they have to be negative and uncalculated.
Risk can indeed be beneficial. In fact, I would argue that the biggest risk of all is not taking any, in hopes of being in a safe place. I'm glad that swimming, and its hardships have helped shaped you view of "failure". I agree that failure is only a failure if you don't learn anything from it. This class definitely helps put the fears of failure into perspective.
ReplyDeleteI had a really similar situation with running track I tried my hardest to get to the state meet for the mile my junior year, however, I did not make it. I tried all off-season to increase my time for the mile my senior year and I was able to make the state meet which was very cool to see. I was very excited to be able to run this event because I worked so hard to try and get there.
ReplyDeleteHello Georgia,
ReplyDeleteThis was an awesome post! I really agree with your perspective on what actually constitutes failure. Most of our lives' biggest failures are really our most important teachers, each with their own individual lessons to show us. As long as you took something away from it and grew because of it, you didn't fail at all. Thanks for sharing!
Josh