Celebrating Failure

One time I failed during this semester was when I had to do a recorded interview for a sophomore summit for Goldman Sachs and did not hear back from them. Before I took the real take, I did several practice rounds and rehearsed what I was going to say. I was really nervous because it was my first time doing a recorded virtual interview and was not used to how impersonal it was. After several practice rounds, I decided to just record myself and submit my response to Goldman. However, I did not realize that it was only going to be one question that I would be asked and did not know that I would not have ample time to come up with a response. I ended up pausing for a good 5 seconds before I gave a response that was not very clear and seemed very rushed because I was too nervous to think of a strong answer. I was quite upset at myself because I only had one shot to give them an impression, yet I missed that opportunity. I did not think that my response was a representation of the skills I could offer to the company.

Instead of dwelling on the experience and being upset at myself, I decided to self-reflect and analyze the things I could have worked on or prepared for in advance to prevent something like that from happening again. I realized that I should have looked up possible interview questions online and have answers to these questions already so I would have more of an idea on what to say. I should have also been able to relate my previous experience on my resume to the question they had asked so it shows how my skills would be useful for their company. I also learned that I should take deep breaths and make sure that I am relaxed before I record myself so I don’t stutter too much or stare at the camera like a deer in headlights for too long.

Although failure is something that is difficult to accept and acknowledge, failure is the only effective way to improve upon oneself and reach success. Personally, I think I handle failure well because I am a very self-reflective individual and learned to not take my failures too personally. Whenever I fail, I always accept how I feel and let myself experience the hurt and embarrassment for a little bit. I think rejecting the emotions I am feeling is not a great way to try to overcome my failure because repressing these emotions will just cause them to build up and affect me more in the long-run. Once I have accepted these feelings, I remind myself that my failures are not a representation of my capabilities and I reflect on the things I could have worked on so I will be successful the next time I try to attempt it. I am not afraid to fail again or get no for an answer because I think it’s better to try and not get the response I wanted than to not try at all and miss out on an opportunity.

 I think this class has not really affected my perspective on failure because I have experienced many failures in my life through my own personal experiences and learned to handle them. Ever since I was a child, my mom has always taught me to go out and take risks because I would never know what could come out of it if I did not try. I would rather live my life trying things and knowing the end result from my own experience than not knowing and wondering what would happen if I did take that risk.