The Beauty of Failure by Alexis

The Beauty of Failure by Alexis - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Failure is a part of life. If you don’t ever fail at something, you will never learn. If you don’t learn, then you will never change. When the word failure comes to mind, many people may think that it is negative, but in my opinion, I think that it is good for learning experiences. Learning from failure is important because people benefit from seeing what went wrong in athletic performance, the workplace, and relationships. It is good for learning experiences because it encourages people to do better the next time. For example, when a baby first learns to walk they won’t get it the first few times, but after a while they will begin to walk after many times of trying. Failure has given me an opportunity to receive feedback on my strengths as well as areas of improvement all for the purpose of getting better. When reframed as a good, constructive, and essential part of learning, failure is a master teacher to life’s biggest successes.

One particular time that I failed at something was during my freshman basketball season in high school. Throughout the entire season we only won three games, not because we were bad players but because we didn’t take advantage of the knowledge that was given to us during practices and because we didn’t play as a team in games. Most of my teammates didn’t share the ball as if they were playing by themselves. Not only did this affect our reputation but it caused a lot of conflict within the team because people would get angry at each other. During practices we always goofed off and never took anything serious which is why our shot percentages in games were low. We always wondered why we never won any games but never put much thought into it. By the middle of the season, the team as a whole had grown tired of hearing negative comments about the season record. Many people would say “you all suck at basketball” and many had even questioned how any of us made the team. I personally grew tired of people doubting my ability to play basketball. This influenced each of my team members and I to change our ways to become a better team and make a good look on the girls basketball program at our school. By the end of our season, we had won about two more games consecutively. From my experiences, I realized that it’s not so much about how many games we won but how we played as a team and how hard we tried. Coming up to my Sophomore and Junior year of high school, my experiences inspired me to practice more and work harder to be successful on the Junior Varsity team. It also inspired me to influence my teammates to do the same because we were all on the same team that year. During the course of those seasons, our collaborative skills with playing on a team and working together as a team to become better players improved which made our chances of winning more games become higher.

My experiences in basketball in high school has taught me to never give up and that success is never handed to you. You have to work for it. I found that success means having the courage, the determination and the will to become the person or player you believe you were meant to be. If necessary, this means to follow your own path and stay true to yourself. We should take advantage of what our coaches are teaching us and use it the right way in games. This is such an important lesson to learn because realizing your weaknesses will help you improve them in the future. Owning up to failure and accepting it has helped me become a better person. When we all have an opportunity to fail, when there are people to support us and gently guide us through our failures, when we have the chance to reflect and learn from our mistakes and eventually reach epiphanies of understanding, then we are learning how to make the most of all the experiences given to us throughout our lives.