Results Blues: Why Failure is a Series of Victories.
Think about what it took to get to this point. Think about all you’ve learned over the last decade and more of school. Think about how you have grown as a person, about how much you’ve discovered about the world. Think about the people you have met, the stories that inspired you, the adventures you had. Think about how hard you worked, even if you didn’t work as hard as you could have.
Think about the future. Maybe you didn’t get into your top uni choice. Maybe you didn’t get into any of your uni choices. Maybe you are secretly pleased that you didn’t get in so that you can follow your dreams of becoming a goat herder in Scandinavia. Maybe you got into your second choice, and while that’s a bit disappointing you will still get an inspiring degree, meet wonderful people, and get blind drunk every other night during Fresher’s week. (But not this year, please social distance!!) You will still have fun. You will continue learning. I was on the phone to my grandmother a few days ago, she was talking about how even though she left school really young, she has still managed to be curious, keep an open mind and continue learning whenever the opportunities arise. I remember being six years old and teaching her how to draw a horse, and then ten years later she took up an art class, and just five years after that she is an accomplished amateur artist, who really enjoys painting and drawing. There are so many paths in life. You must never forget that.
I got into my second choice of university. My results were good, but not as good as they could have been. I was thrilled! I made valedictorian in a class full of people 100 times smarter than me in more ways than one (people who can easily cross a road without panicking, for one thing). But I had that niggling doubt that maybe I could have got into my top choice if I had just worked a bit harder. If I hadn’t decided to binge-watch the entire backlog of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the time I was supposed to be revising. If I hadn’t gone to a party the night before a crucial piece of coursework was due. If I hadn’t got distracted by my crush in class and realised that my essay was missing a paragraph. If I hadn’t gone on wonderful coming-of-age-movie adventures with my friends and instead spent all of last year working hard. Those failures, those less than 100% essays I handed in, were actually little victories, victories where I got to live my teenage years, where I had stories to tell and adventures to have. Where I let myself live in the cracks of my failures.
You might be thinking, okay but look -you didn’t fail, you got into the uni you wanted, you even topped your class, you couldn’t possibly be lecturing ME on what to think about MY results. And you’re right, for a hundred reasons. I come from a position of relative privilege. I achieved what I wanted, even if it wasn’t quite the way I imagined it, even if those numbers could have been a bit higher. Even if I hadn’t felt like a burn out at sixteen when my life felt like it was falling apart. I didn’t even have to deal with the horrendous chaos of the COVID-results era - I passed my exams in December before it all kicked off. But what I want to show you is that each of your failures, however big or small, are victories in their own right.
Yes, maybe you fucked around too much and never revised because you were off doing more interesting things. Maybe you’d had bigger fish to deal with. Maybe your computer crashed and you couldn’t afford to replace it. Maybe someone died in your family and exams just felt too small in this big world to deal with. Maybe the world is just too big and too messy and it always feels like it’s collapsing around you because well goddammit it is, but all we have is each other and the future and culture and art and science and hope and well if that isn’t something worth living for and creating for and exploring for then I don’t know what is.
In my class of people who were 100 times smarter than me in more ways than one, I got the best exam results. I passed the man’s test. I did it. Pat on the back well done, off to a foreign university, let's put your name in the local paper. But those 100 times smarter than me in more ways than one people, are my friends. I have friends who got into university because they want to go and find out what the stars are like or because they want to be lawyers or teachers. I have friends who didn’t get into uni or are maybe doing something different, at least for now, but fuck it they are doing amazing things already like having their art sold all around the country or starting a band, or an acting career, or running a charity, or spending their gap year learning sign language and teaching children violin because they didn’t manage to pass the auditions to get into music school the first time but there is always next time, and there is always time. I have friends who have moved away and got a proper desk job so that they can be transferred to New York because fuck it NYC who wouldn’t want a pathway to get there. I have friends who got one of the best music grades in the state and performed in Sydney with his bass guitar, because he could. I have a friend who built a fucking boat. Just because he could.
Because every little victory is a big victory. And every big failure is a little victory and every little failure is a big victory. Because there are so many things you can do and paths you can take.
You worked hard. Or maybe you didn’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve learnt. That you’ve grown. That you’ve got the whole future in front of you and its yours for the taking. It's yours for the making. Good luck.
Comments
Post a Comment