Celebrating Failure

1. As a journalism major we are required to take Reporting. This class is very notorious for its level of difficulty, so difficult that our professor has a powerpoint slide titled "How to get a C in Reporting" because a C is something to celebrate in these circumstances. Every week we are required to write a story, due at the beginning of class, with at least two sources. One week, I wrote about the presidential race because we were a day away from the first primaries. I interviewed an American politics professor and a business major since one of the republican runners happens to have a business background to get his take on him running for president. When I finished my story I was really proud of it because I felt that it localized the election and really said something about how students felt about it. However, when I got my paper back I got a 35/70....I was devastated. My biggest mistake, misspelling Hillary Clinton's name by simply forgetting to add another L (I spelled it with only one L). This error cost me 50 points. I had really messed this one up, worst of all I worked harder on this story than others where I had gotten a better grade.


2. This error taught me to always read with a critical eye and double check every single proper noun, even with a name as simple as Hillary. There are many ways to spell a name and sometimes even though spell check doesn't correct it, it doesn't mean its right.


3. I don't like failure, it's hard to admit and of course embarrassing, especially when you misspell something. I go through different phases when I face failure, first I feel down because I always put my all into things, then I start thinking about giving up, after I go back and forth between giving up and "well I've made it this far", I go into a "I can't give up on this, I have to keep pushing forward" phase and finally I pick myself back up and keep moving along. I learn from failure, I take it as a lesson on what not to do and build up from it. I believe its what makes us stronger. This class has changed my perspective on failure by showing me that it's ok to fail and that it's not the end of the world because even the most successful people go through it. In the Women's Entrepreneurship Symposium I attended, a lot of the women on the panel expressed that they made mistakes along the way but they still flourished in their business in the end because they learned from the risks they took. This inspired me to take more risks, something I would've been more afraid to do four months ago.