I can relate to Bella McKee’s essay “The Importance of Failure” because I too failed many classes. I didn’t fail because I am “stupid, inadequate, or incompetent,” as Bella puts it, but because I was that person who is scared to raise their hand to ask a question. But now that I’ve matured a bit, as Bella writes, “I am ready to take on things I wasn’t able to in the past.”
Going through those failures taught me how to succeed. You cannot succeed if you never fail. So don’t take failure as a humiliation to your parents or as proof that you’re not good enough, but as step to becoming successful. Once you know how you failed, you can examine it, prevent it, and succeed.
Thank you, Bella, for writing this piece on how to process the failures that I and many others have experienced.