Celebrating Failure

1) One of the failures that I faced this semester was for one of labs for the Programming Fundamentals 2 class. We are supposed to prepare a program based on the given details for each lab and we get around one week’s time for it. For one of those labs, I started working a bit later than usual because I thought that it was going to be easy. I worked on it and had it ready except for when I tried to test it, it wouldn’t work and would return compile errors. I went over the code several times but couldn’t find the mistake. Finally, I decided to rewrite the code entirely from scratch once again. Fortunately, this time it worked, and I was able to submit it successfully on time, but not without stressing my mind out. Later on, when I rechecked the old code, I found out that it was just a small typo error that had caused me this problem.

2) I learned two things from this experience. The first is that I should never procrastinate anything for any reason. The second one is that I should never underestimate anything and nothing in this world actually comes “easy”. I need to work hard and in a timely manner in order to achieve anything.

3) I think that failures are a part and parcel of life and everyone needs to accept it. On a funny side, I think that failures make for a really good success story. When it comes to dealing with failures, I like to react in two ways based on what type of failure it is. If it is that I can still convert into success somewhat like the example above, I will take it up as a challenge and not rest until I have finally found a successful solution. If it is something that can’t be changed such as bad grades on an exam, I get really stressed in such situations. Thus, I like to first calm myself down, listen to some music, watch a good movie and then finally reflect on where I went wrong and practice hard enough that I never repeat that mistake again. For the reading reflection assignment of this class, I read a book about failures and that has helped me a lot.