Add Them Up by Brogan

Add Them Up by Brogan - November 2018 Scholarship Essay

"Failure is unimportant: it takes courage to make a fool of yourself." - Charlie Chaplin. Going through most of high school, I started noticing a pattern: Making mistakes was extremely difficult. Coming from some classes, all we would have to do is copy notes from online videos that would be giving us our "lesson", and we would get graded on that. As one would expect, it was almost impossible to fail, unless actively trying to do so.
On top of this, I was dealing with some extraordinary mental health issues. It was an interesting experience to say the least, as I started to develop the sense that I was growing in a silver spoon environment, if you will. I was afraid of failure, but I was aware of my reasoning. Between making sure that I was legitimately learning something, and trying to secure my life after high school, I was not the most engaging individual in the room. I was a cerebral train wreck. But I noticed something once I had moved out of the house, and into a completely terrestrial environment.
It was one of the most difficult things to fathom at once, it was difficult, and grueling at first. And it was the absolute time of my life. I was unaware of things around me, and it was my playground, my crash course, my personal test dummy that I could make into progress. I finally found a compass, if you will, something where I could determine my own direction of right or wrong. Not being able to have, or at the very least even observe this kind of behavior drove me to the brink of madness at home. Considering I have moved back and am currently transferring, I can safely say that I kept the experience in my pocket, because I feel like a completely different person emerging from it. Now I do seek perfection where it isn’t required, at times. But it's much easier to gauge it after said trials. Failure does not frighten me, or rather thinking about failure doesn't frighten me anymore.