Celebrating Failure
This past semester has been a whirlwind for myself. Balancing between work and school engagements has been a real challenge for myself. One thing that I tried several times this semester was focusing on working full time this semester while taking two classes. I had done this in the past and done so with flying colors. Working 40+ hours a week and then managing to get all my assignments completed while I was in community college was no sweat at all. The difference in this semester versus then was the fact that I was taking a more challenging course load than what I was anticipating. Taking a statistics and the entrepreneurship class had many engaging assignments, unlike the courses I was taking in the community college. Managing my time to give the most quality to the assignments is what I was faced with this semester. The assignments that were the most demanding were the interview assignments which definitely put me out of my comfort zone. I did skip a couple of the interview assignments because I was feeling extremely uncomfortable. After attempting them several times, I found that I should have just pushed through and allowed mistakes to happen. What I found through taking this class is that blunders are going to happen and perfection is the mother that doesn’t allow you to grow-up. Even though you can plan for everything imaginable, the plans may not work out as you had hoped and you need to just go with the flow. Looking back to look forward, I will absolutely continue to be pushing myself to allow mistakes and failure to happen. I know I could have done much better within this course if I would have allowed for more mistakes to happen. I will be taking more risks to create failure to work though my awkwardness in the moment.
Nicolas, I know what you mean about balancing work and school. For some of us work has to come first because we are supporting others and that makes it even more stressful. You are right that "pushing through" is important. In fact, I'd say this is one of the most critical things that separates successful people from under achievers. They do the things that are uncomfortable, the things that no one else wants to do. And that's how they get more rewards in life. Glad you are getting that out of the class, not sure if Dr Pryor had that as a goal but I imagine it's working that way for a lot of us. Good luck! Here's mine http://rustywinter.com/celebrating-failure-week-13/
ReplyDeleteNicolas,
ReplyDeleteFirst off: more power to you. Taking classes while working full time is a serious challenge and you should feel very accomplished for completing the term. This class was very time consuming: all the "Stuff" we had to do, multiple times a week, it all felt very overwhelming at times. I like your comment about the interviews, because in a lot of ways my experiences with them was also uncomfortable and I also, on a few occasions, didn't do the assignments simply because they made me feel horribly uncomfortable. It's good that you recognized the issue you had with those assignments, because as your post posits, you'll work hard to overcome that discomfort in the future. Good job! Take a look at mine if you have a chance! http://coffeemumbles.blogspot.com/2016/04/celebrating-failure.html
Hello Nicholas, I just want to say, like Paul, I am very impressed in your ability to be taking classes and be working full time. I am currently a full time student and part time worker and I can not imagine how you handle it. The hardships you must have faced and time management skills that you showed must have been tremendous. Congratulations on a successful semester! You should go and check out my post on Celebrating Failure at http://jakesentrepreneurshipuf.blogspot.com
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