“Success” is a bit of a buzzword these days. We hear it in our first-world lives so often that it’s a wonder we aren’t desensitized to it. It seems like we are always striving toward the vague and versatile concept -- it is, after all, in our nature to crave purpose and direction -- and for college-aged students and young professionals, there exists a fairly prescribed laundry list of “things that we can do to be successful.” As if these things are our sole keys to the lives we’ve always wanted to live. Often, there’s no disputing this list of chores. Of course, we should polish our resumes, network with established professionals in our field of interest and try our hardest at every endeavor. For the lucky few, these tips alone will get them far enough. However, this list leaves out a crucial ingredient for success: failure.
Yes, failure.
Today, the unthinkable happened to me. I was very obviously ghosted by a national Marketing Director for a well-known company (who had personally invited me to be interviewed for an internship position). Ouch.
Before the interview, things felt like they were right on track; I had this interview scheduled and another lined up in the following week. But Murphy’s Law seems to exert quite the influence over my life, and on the day of my interview I ended up thinking I knew exactly where I was going (and did not leave with enough time for error). I ended up being wrong, getting lost and showing up late to my interview. I had to call and confirm the office location with my interviewer because I was completely and utterly lost. When I finally did find my way into my interviewer’s office, I was flustered. The good ol’ laundry list for success was in the back of my mind telling me to keep calm and do my best anyway. So I did. I quickly moved past my mistake and tried to perform exceptionally in the actual interview.
Today (one day post-interview), before my mistake had become truly clear to me, I was attending a PR firm visit with my close-knit group of fellow Martin Scholars (a mentor-protege program of sorts within the Department of Communication) and, as all of our outings have been, today’s event was extremely rewarding and left me feeling on top of the world. During these kinds of meetings I often catch myself thinking, Wow. I’m so lucky. I must be pretty special to have this privilege. This afternoon, in the middle of a thought like that, one of my Martin Scholar peers excitedly told me that she got an email from the same interviewer offering her the internship.
My heart didn’t sink right away -- surely my interviewer was still in the process of selecting and notifying up to 3 prospective interns -- but it did sink deeper and deeper into my chest as the day stretched on and my email never came. Meanwhile, two more of my friends were celebrating their new and exciting internship opportunities. I awakened my phone every five minutes for the rest of the night to no avail. My inbox was just full of spam -- no exciting emails from prestigious North American Marketing Directors.
Until tonight, I would have liked to think that “failure” isn’t in my vocabulary. That it has never been an “option” for me. But today felt like one big deja-vu. I couldn’t put my finger on why at first, but I realized later that it was perhaps because I’ve been here before. Perhaps I have felt failure and humiliation to this degree at some point. Perhaps it has been blocked from my memory. If I try hard enough to recall these painful memories, they come back like razor-sharp boomerangs. Even so, perhaps I haven't yet been dealt some of the world's cruelest rejections. In some ways, this is new for me. In other ways, it is not.
Morbidly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, in many ways, I come from failure.
Hear me out: I adore my family because, well, they’re my family. But I’ve worked so hard to escape the aspects of my life that, before college, seemed inescapable: growing up in a filthy trailer, dealing with my parents’ messy divorce (after many years of seemingly unsolvable tension), and figuring literally everything (college applications, scholarships, student loans, moving away from home and coughing up the means to live by myself) out on my own.
Part of being a black sheep is accepting the fact that the environment from which you come is not ideal for you. You are different and you must accept that, at times, it can be lonely. In my case, it also means accepting failure. Early on, I was exposed to imperfection; my parents failed to finish high school, failed to go to college (after getting their GEDs) and failed to give me any insight about what colleges were right for me, what major to choose or how to pay for it all. They were poor. They were powerless. In these ways, I came from failure. But that absolutely doesn’t mean I’m worth less, my family is worth less or that my hard work amounts to nothing. If anything, I can thank my family for indirectly teaching me how to make something out of nothing and to be brave in the face of potential failure.
I can’t say that I’m without success even though my life has been peppered with moments like this evening’s news (or lack thereof). I’ve allowed myself the time to be disappointed and to feel like life's not fair, but it’s time for me to accept the true ubiquity of failure (because it's been here all along) and make it work in my favor. I’ve learned from my mistakes. In this case, I learned that it is imperative to scope out an interview location before the interview. As I’ve done in the past, I’ll transform this failure into something beautiful and valuable.
People think that “success” and “failure” are opposites. I very much believe that, despite what the dictionary says, the two concepts are necessary to each other’s existence. You can’t know you have failed without first knowing some degree of success. And you certainly can’t succeed without failing at some point first. There will always be another chance.
