Celebrating Failure

Assignment 26A

1. I suppose a time I would consider a failure is less about the final result and more about the way I treated the process. Midway through the semester, I had a group project with four other individuals that was a large part of our grade for the class. I tried hard to collaborate with my group, to listen to them and be heard myself, and to compromise whenever I could. I shortly gave up this mentality once I realized that I was not heard and not valued as a team member in this project. I became silent and didn’t talk unless I was talked to. Ironically, my group got the greatest project grade in the whole class, but I didn’t feel like I really contributed my best self to the project because of my frustrations with the team.

2) I learned that I can be stubborn, and sometimes it is to my own disadvantage. I learned that my feelings are valid and that bringing them up to my teammates could be beneficial for me in my own self-growth.

3) I think that the hardest thing about failure is getting back up on your feet. Even though we got an outstanding grade on the assignment, I still felt unmotivated to talk to these individuals in my class, or to confront the issues that had come up for me during our time working together. Through reflection, I realized that I needed to confront these issues in order to work through them and learn from them. Therefore, I confronted the teammates and am very proud of myself for having done so. Failure was definitely an emotional experience for me; I was completely in my head about it. Talking to them helped me get out of my head and face the facts. I think that the times I failed in this class would be the times I refused to do some of the assignments. I felt too exhausted and defeated my other classes to do them, and I think that, in this sense, this class has shown me that failure is lack of showing up. You can’t fail if you show up, because you’re already halfway there.  And yes, to answer the final question, I am more likely to take a risk now than I was just a few months ago. I am always moving forward, never back.