Success is an Exit by Faith

Success is an Exit by Faith - February 2021 Scholarship Essay

In Spanish, success is called “éxito”. When I first began to learn the language, I always thought of “exit” when I heard this word. Although it was a confusing false cognate for me, I later realized that it makes much more sense than I first perceived. An exit is a place where one leaves after having finished business in some place or area. This applies to success because it only comes after finishing a task or a goal. Success is something that comes upon leaving an undertaking, and in that way, could be considered an exit.
Before thinking about the Spanish translation of the word, I thought about success more like perfection. Because of this flawed definition, every assignment, essay, or test on which I did not make a perfect score was a failure in my eyes. I would become discouraged very easily and rapidly because I felt like I would never measure up.

However, last semester, many of my professors assured us that in taking a class, the goal is not to complete everything perfectly. Rather, they said, success comes from what we learn from the class. Of course, they highlighted the importance of the homework we did, but they encouraged us to focus on learning instead of perfection in our classwork. As I thought more about the words of my professors as well as the word “success” and the word “éxito”, I found peace in simply learning from my assignments and finishing them to the best of my ability.

This way of thinking of success has changed me. This semester, I am still anxious about not doing well. However, sometimes with work, family, and church responsibilities, I do not have enough time to do everything perfectly. I sometimes make mistakes, but I have learned that I learn more from those mistakes and the difficult assignments than from the easier work that I complete. I have become more appreciative of those challenging assignments because, from them, I learn the most.

For this reason, when I now think about success in college, I know that success is achieved through learning rather than through perfect completion. It is about feeling good about the finished product. Although I have not completed my college journey, I still feel successful because of all I have learned about science, writing, other people, and myself. However, I will feel really successful once I have learned all I can from my college experience. That success only comes as an exit.