Being a college student with the end of the semester in sight, the only thing on my mind is that terrifying “F” word...

FINALS.

I know that I am not alone in the fear, stress, lack of sleep, and excessive eating that will soon be a part of my routine as I try to frantically finish writing papers and studying. But I cannot help feeling hopeless, as though failure will soon consume me, bringing my world to an end.

Yes, that may be a little melodramatic, but in my mind, tests are so much more than an evaluation of a class or skill — they determine who I am as a person. For that reason, I believe tests to be the absolute worst part of my education. Whether that be the SATs, a midterm, final, or even a physical fitness test, I dread and despise them all. I understand the importance of needing a means of measurement to gauge whether or not a student is fully grasping the information being taught, but the pressure that accompanies tests can be unbearable.

Thus, with our society’s growing need to remind us to either be the best or else we fail at life, it’s more than difficult not to be an irrational, crazed being consumed with panic and fear when a test comes around. Being a victim of this ideology, I have struggled with the idea of failure for as long as I can remember. Every day, those nasty little voices in my head repeat, “You suck at life,” “You can’t do anything right, so why do you try?” “You make the biggest mistakes,” “You are a nobody and will always be a nobody”. Needless to say, these thoughts are damaging and toxic to my psyche, and as much as I try to combat them, much of my self-hatred talk stems from my inability to be perfect, of knowing that there will always be times that I will fail.

When considering that the very mention of failure in our lives is marked as “taboo”, as though with our acceptance that we cannot do everything exactly right 100 percent of the time makes us weak, it is hard to see failure for what it is: a necessity. For it is with failure that we learn and grow. It is with failure that we are one step closer to finding out what it is we are meant to discover, and who we are meant to be.

I would enjoy nothing more than to one day relish in my failures, to believe them to be a wondrous part of my journey that will lead me to a life of happiness and acceptance. While I am nowhere near there yet, I have hope that by writing all this down, by letting my mind release the fears I have been suppressing, that I can move forward and embrace the failures that await me. I suppose that’s what I should really be taking away from the testing process — that failure and imperfections are things we fear, and it is our willingness to expose, confront, and accept our fears that allows us to truly be successful.