I’ve failed at quite a collection of things, soccer, ballet, figure skating, the flute in fourth grade, but those failures never seemed to affect me. Something changed after I graduated high school. School had gone from something you needed to get through to get to college, to being in college and realizing that my classes were preparing me to be an actual adult. The first question almost everyone asks when they meet a college student is “what is your major?” I am a biology major, and once I say that the person who I’m talking to begins to assume a lot of things about me. "You must be really smart," they say, and I don’t disagree to avoid a lot of questions. I agree with them so they don’t ridicule me for being a biology major and not being smart. The truth is I’m not smart, I’m determined. I failed the first biology exam I ever took at college, and I’ve failed many chemistry exams. I don’t fail because I’m not trying; I study for hours, for weeks in advance. Yet I never seemed to be able to memorize all the organic chemistry reactions I should know by heart. I’m still a biology major, and I passed both Organic Chemistry 1 and 2 but it was because I went into my professor’s office before classes started for the day, and went for help every single day the week leading up to finals. There are people in my classes that are much smarter than I am but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a scientist.
I won't tell you it isn’t hard, it's devastating every time I get an exam back that I’ve worked so hard to do well on and I haven’t. I constantly wonder what I’m doing wrong, what’s wrong with me. Why am I not smart? I begin to feel like a failure. I feel like I’m lying to everyone who thinks I’m really smart. I feel like I don’t belong in my major because I struggle. I never give up because I want to understand these concepts. I am determined to understand how every system of the human body works, how the world works. I love that I made RNA in genetics, that I made ibuprofen in chemistry. If you enjoy something, you shouldn’t give up on it because you aren’t the best at it. It’s O.K. to fail, as long as you don’t let that failure define you.
Let your failures inspire you, let them motivate you. If someone is telling you that you can’t do something, then prove them wrong. You are capable of almost anything you put your mind to as long as you dedicate the time into energy into getting it. I have failed at many things, but I am not a failure. Like so many others before me who have struggled and been rejected I will persist and work hard and I will be a scientist. I will leave you with this quote from Ellen DeGeneres, “when you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.”
