As the saying goes, you must fail in order to succeed. That rings true in every aspect of life, and wasn’t something that I appreciated until I had finished my freshman year of college. Screwing up is something that I had obviously had experience with, but had never really had significant consequences from my actions. That all changed second week of school. I made the unfortunate mistake of stealing from the campus bookstore, and at my school stealing is taken incredibly severely. We have an honor code, which means that if you lie, cheat, or steal, you will be put before a board of your peers to review how severe your infraction is and what your punishment should be. Once my superiors found out I had stolen, I was immediately submitted for an honor board. This was not taken lightly by the Air Force ROTC Captain, who promptly removed me from the detachment and so ended my dreams of being an Air Force pilot. On top of that, Army ROTC and Navy ROTC doesn’t accept cadets with honor violations. So, the main reason I came to Norwich University, to pursue a career in the Air Force as an AC-130 pilot, was gone after only three weeks of school. This scenario was a lot to process on top of dealing with school, Mountain Cold Weather training and rookdom, and resulted in only a 2.31 GPA at the end of the semester. This presented a serious issue, because I needed a 3.00 GPA to keep my scholarship from the school. If I didn’t fix my grades, I would be leaving the school I had dreamt about attending for years. Over Christmas break, I reevaluated my life goals and major. I switched from electrical engineering to exercise science, changed from pilot to strength and conditioning coach, and proceeded to get a 3.84 GPA the following semester and stay at Norwich. This drastic life change wouldn’t have happened without my screw up. The colossal fail freshman year resulted in me realizing what I really wanted to spend my life doing, and how to take school and my decisions seriously. Though it took me months and months to realize, I have come to the conclusion that I needed this wake up call. Until then, I had a serious issue with ignoring my responsibilities and not accepting that these mistakes were my own fault. Failures like this one are what result in success. Thomas Edison is famous for failing over one thousand times in making a functioning light bulb. When asked about it he said, “I didn’t fail, I found one thousand ways how not to make a light bulb.” This serves to showcase how significant failure is, and what a great teacher it can be. Don’t let failure deter you from your goals or knock you off track. Success is standing up one more time than you fall down, and trying again one more time than you fail. Use it as your coach, a guide for future attempts and a lesson for next time. Failure hurts, but nothing shows you the path more accurately. SO go fail. DO something wrong. Learn from your mistakes and find the success that you deserve.
