You Fail Yourself when You Let Failure Succeed by Joshwald

You Fail Yourself when You Let Failure Succeed by Joshwald - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Before I begin this essay, I would just like to offer a disclaimer: failures and successes are not always singular events, nor are they always easy to distinguish. Sometimes, they bleed into each other in time and intensity. Successes and failures don’t happen in vacuums, and I hope my example clarifies this truth.
I once despaired after receiving a score of 23 out of 100 on a chemistry test on some concept I have not thought about for almost 3 years. I had fallen asleep at the wheel-- rather, on my desk-- because I had kept myself awake the entire night before trying to memorize facts without understanding them, which is kind of like memorizing an entire monologue of a telenovela in Spanish and then being asked to converse in the language. You may know the sounds but the words do not materialize as bubble letters in your head, and even if they did, you wouldn't know what they meant nor could you explain them to someone else. Somehow I had let myself become a spectator in school, and the red, ugly "23" on my paper dragged me out of the bleachers and into the arena. Armed with a wooden sword and a tattered burlap sack for armor, I began my fight for academia.
This semester, my sophomore spring of college, I am the busiest I have ever been: I am doubled up on writing intensive courses, taking a dense history lecture, diving into an honors Spanish Civil War seminar, and, most importantly, making progress towards my Urban Studies major. Having consistently made Dean’s List, I have not seen a “23” on any of my assignments, and if I did, the denominator would probably be a “20”. My academic life has flourished since that high school chemistry test—I now carry a broad sword and hefty battle armor crafted by Hephaestus himself.
What changed? I asked my chemistry teacher to meet with me after class, I did extra problems, I drilled on the weekends, I bought a planner, I color-coded, I said “no” to social events, I said “no” to more social events, I said “yes” to office hours, I said “yes” to internships, I said “yes” to papers, “yes” to papers, “yes” to papers.
Yes, papers, no, people.
The deadline for declaring majors is tomorrow, and I haven’t officially declared Urban Studies, but two weeks ago, I got a small part in the school play. It’s not a big part, but I decided to audition because, before the chemistry test, I loved theater. I had started in the second grade, narrating Charlotte’s Web, and I kept doing it until I was told I was not taking my education seriously. Or, at least, that’s what the number “23” told me. Today in rehearsal, we talked about the importance of “passion in work” for the success of art—specifically, the semantic and philosophical idea that work should mingle passion, not that those two should be separate states. It was at this moment that I realized that “education” is not a separate state from “academia”, the world I had hurled myself into after that chemistry failure. Education through academia alone attempts to separate passion and work, and I think I was too young to realize that in high school (not that I significantly older now, 3 years afterward).
Tomorrow, I will declare Theater as my major. I am not rejecting academia for the arts, as I previously did to the arts for academia. That is too extreme a measure. I have the skills of “work” acquired through years of practice, borne of fear of academic failure, and with them I will marry “passion” to better round my thus far square college experience.
I am 20 now. Let’s see what failures and successes teach me when I am 23.