Alex Clouser- Celebrating Failure Assignment 26

This semester was my roughest semester here so far and was no walk in the park. I decided at the beginning of the semester to take 16 credits and I believe that was a big mistake as I have been extremely busy all semester trying to keep up with my classes. This semester has been full of a lot of challenges, but not necessarily failures. I have also had a couple health scares throughout the semester that I have been monitoring closely with my doctor that have made things even more hectic. Overall, I think my biggest failure this semester was getting a D on my first financial accounting exam. I count this as my biggest failure this semester because I have already taken financial accounting in high school during my freshman year as part of the Academy of Finance program at my high school. I believe that having already took it somewhat contributed to this bad grade because I was very overconfident and thought that I didn't need to study that well because the test was just going over the basics that I already knew. I did not study until the day before the test because of this overconfidence and it ended up hurting my grade very badly. This failure was a wake-up call that I needed to start putting in more effort to that class in order to succeed. I learned from this failure by starting to study for my next exam a week before so that I had enough time to practice and thoroughly understand everything. This improved work ethic was rewarded by a much better grade on the second exam that brought up my grade a lot. I believe that failure is hard, but it is necessary to grow as a person. Failure brings about change in our lives more effectively than anything else. I usually handle failure by freaking out at first and thinking of the worst possible scenarios and consequences to come out of this failure, but then after about an hour I settle down and realize that I just have to do something to avoid the same mistakes next time. I usually brush things off pretty easily and am a pretty laid back individual, so I don't fear failure a whole lot, but I definitely have a healthy awareness of it. To be honest, I do not think this class has changed my perspective on failure as I always saw it as a stepping stone for success even before this class. I feel as though this class has just emphasized my pre-existing view on failure and not really changed it. I would say that I am not a risk averse person, but I do not actively seek risks for fun, I will take some risks but most of the time I would rather play it safe.