We have all failed or done poorly on a test or assignment before. 

     After a week or, realistically for some, a day of studying and trying to memorize all the information from a unit in a class, you might finally feel comfortable enough with the material to at least get a passing grade on a test. You sit down, write your name, look at the page and think to yourself, “Oh, shoot, I forgot.” All the information you just studied is gone. Your confidence is down. 

     This feeling can be awful and overwhelming, especially if you went in thinking you would do well on the test. If there is one thing I hate the most in life, it is failing at something. When I don’t perform well academically, I think to myself, “I should have known this.” I would say anything to put myself down, even though that was not what I needed. 

     Instead, what I should have been doing was recognizing my mistake and asking, “How am I going to improve from this?” and, “What will I do to get better?”

     According to Forbes Senior Contributor William Arruda, an American business magazine, “Failure is not a step backward; it’s an excellent stepping stone to success. We never learn to move out of our comfort zone if we don’t overcome our fear of failure.”

     In school, it is easy to be hard on yourself because chances are, there will be someone who is a better test-taker or athlete than you, and that can be hard to realize. You can only be the best version of yourself, so why would it be okay to compare yourself to others? 

     As most of you have most likely heard before, you learn from your mistakes, and from those mistakes, you can better yourself. 

     According to Arruda, “The most progressive companies deliberately seek employees with track records reflecting both failure and success. That’s because someone who survives failure has gained irreplaceable knowledge and the unstoppable perseverance born from overcoming hardship.”

     Failure is just a part of life, and if progressive companies try to hire people with failures and successes, then you, as a high school student, are doing something right that companies look for when hiring people.

     To those who believe in the well-known quote, “Failure is not an option,” it needs to be understood that yes, it is. While failure may not feel great, it is an opportunity to learn and grow, and that is what school is about.