College Chronicles: The Importance of Failure

The Importance of Failure 


I.Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to my study blog. As some sort of introduction, I will tell you a little bit about myself. I am 20 years old and I am a junior college student majoring in Biochemistry here in the U.S. Although this sounds great on paper, like I must be really smart or make perfect grades or something,having such an intense major can be rough at times. 


II.Story time

So, I'm pretty sure you're wondering what sort of rough patches I have encountered thus far (hence the title). Well, as a Biochemistry major we are required to take Organic Chemistry 1 and 2. Last year when I was taking these courses I found out why everyone talks about the big, bad ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. In all honesty, the first semester of Organic Chemistry 1 was not that bad. I must admit things got intense toward the end of the semester when we stared talking about reaction mechanisms, but long story short I made it out alive. Moving on to the second semester of Organic Chemistry 2, things definitely picked up a bit. I had changed to a new professor assuming that I would have a better experience and have better grades. As the semester went along, I began to realize that I may have made a mistake somewhere. My new professor taught at a completely more elevated level than my previous professor. Not that this is a bad thing, but Organic Chemistry is one of those classes that continues to build upon itself or in other words I needed to understand the material from the previous semester to be able to understand the material in the nest semester. So as you can imagine, I essentially felt behind in the class. Proceeding on to the first exam, I ended up making a D which was much lower than I wanted it to be. My professor ended up marking me as someone that is "at risk" and basically forced me to go talk to an academic adviser about my options (aka dropping the class). Dropping the class was out of the picture for me because I couldn't afford to take a summer class, plus who wants to spend more time and money to retake a course. At this point I knew I had to do something about my grade, so I decided to attend his office hours regularly to ensure that I understood EVERYTHING. Weeks of persistently going to his office showed in the next exam and I managed to bring my grade all the way from a D up to a B. At this point, I was ecstatic and I knew I could pass this class if only I worked hard...really hard. 

III. So...What Does This Mean?

I wanted to share this experience in efforts of hopefully encouraging someone to not let one bad grade detour you. If there is a goal you want to achieve, sometimes you have to just work a little (or a lot) harder to reach it. Yes that's going to mean more effort on your end, but you have to consider the end goal. If it's something that you really want, you'll do anything to get it.  

Instagram: @pinkstudytea