Reach Your Goals by Failing
This might not be one of the most suitable titles for this post but we will go for it anyways. It comes from my own experience specifically with academics.
I started primary school not being even an average student when it came to class performance and I even repeated “Class One” because of poor performance but after reaching primary three, somehow I became a bright student and picked up really quickly with spellings and that is when my success with academics started. I was always top of the class my whole time from primary three to primary 5 in Government Primary School, Binshua, Donga Mantung Cameroon and I even remember a particular term maybe in primary five when I was the only person who passed(not that I was stingy with answers, maybe my peers didn’t know how to steal answers 😅). Though I attended primary six in a primary school with other tough guys at Good Foundation Primary Foumbot, I still used to come in third or fourth in class and that was still a lot. Fast forward after entering secondary school, I continued toping the class all through my secondary school years. I groomed myself to succeed academically and of course, it had its repercussions.
I got so used to succeeding academically that I was scared of failing and failure changed my whole perspective. I had my first major failure when I applied to study software engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Technology, University of Buea. I had applied only to the particular faculty, after all, I had scored 21/25 points at the GCE Advanced Level and I was confident I would be selected, but to my greatest surprise, I was rejected. This had a great effect on me as I was down psychologically for almost three weeks. I started asking myself a lot of questions, which sounded stupid, most of my peers had started going to school and I was still home not knowing what to do next, and started feeling like I was a failure. Somehow I got past that stage and applied to study Computer Science at the same University. I was so concentrated on passing as I was pressured by the notion people had of me in secondary and primary school that I was an intelligent guy. Anyway, I became used to “passing exams again” and though it was tough, I did great the first year and the first semester of year two.
The next episode kicked in in 2017 we as the first batch of Computer Science were supposed to graduate but I had not completed all my courses. At that point, I did not really care very much about passing exams anymore, I was not scared to be tagged “Hey that intelligent guy didn’t graduate”. In fact, I was not scared of “failure” anymore as I decided that rather than passing exams only, I had to gain real skills, I could not see myself graduating and applying for a role at some company and not being able to defend myself as a techie. I took time and studied software development specifically Android development much harder from then on and blended with school at this point, I was focusing some time to pass my courses and a lot of energy into actually knowing what I was pursuing as a career. This seemed like a detriment to my academics but it is still one of the best life decisions I made in my life. I graduated a year later with Second Class Honours(Lower Division 😏) and at that point, I was not really bothered so much. I had learned to fail for better success.
What is the rationale behind what I am saying? Most people who succeed in some domains especially academics are not used to failures and they get scared of taking chances/opportunities in which they may not succeed, they stay in their shallow success lane and essentially tell themselves that they are succeeding after all. Just get comfortable with failing(do not make it a habit) though but ensure that you find you rise when you fail. The only way I succeeded( I am not blown yet please) at least was to get used to failing or delay as it will not kill you but make you stronger. I have not arrived and I do still study Android development week after week to show myself approved. You might want to find your own niche.
It took a little courage for me to pen this down since I have not been blogging a lot, so do share and comment if you find this enlightening.
Okay Bye.
