26. Celebrating Failure

1) Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed -- whether in this class, or outside of this class. Don't spare any details! It'd be even better if there was something you tried several times this semester, and failed each time.

Personally, it was my biggest goal to gain 15 pounds of muscle this semester. Currently, I've only gained 7. For such a drastic gain of a great amount of muscle, I had to make sure to exercise 5 days a week, and make sure I was having more than 3,000 calories of food everyday. This process was extremely hard and I've failed several times this semester.

2) Tell us what you learned from it.  

I learned that a strict regimen of planning can be helpful, but hard to make over when failed the first several times. Likewise, I planned to work out all weekdays and give my body a good rest during the weekends, and manage my diet to decrease my carbohydrates intake and increase my protein intake. However, when that failed on a certain day/week, it was really hard to make over for the failure in the future.

3) Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure. Failure is hard, isn't it? It's embarrassing, sure, but it also means that we have to change something about ourselves. Talk about how you handle failure (emotionally, behaviorally). Finally, talk about how this class has changed your perspective on failure -- are you more likely to take a risk now than you were just a few months ago?

Well, I don't really receive much damage emotionally or behaviorally when I experience failure. I look back on what I've done wrong, and if I could fix it right there and then, I would happily fix it. If I couldn't fix it right away, I would know that time and effort will give me the ability in the future when I will actually be able to fix the problem causing my failure. Taking this class honestly did not make me a risk averse or a risk loving person, but it did help me calculate and look more into detail about risks and the method of managing them.