By Westin B., ’25
One of the greatest struggles humans face is failure. Throughout life, we face many obstacles that we have to overcome. Sometimes, we may overcome those obstacles, but other times, we may not be able to succeed. However, when we fail that is where we can learn and grow the most.
During my time at Rio, I was not a picture-perfect student. There were many tests, projects, and papers I did well but there were also some that I failed. There were times that I would stay up late into the night studying for something just to get a low grade in the end. Rio Lindo has taught me how to deal with failure and how failure can help me grow into a better person.
When I was dealing with failure it was hard at first because my elementary and middle school years were pretty easy for me. I felt very down because I wasn’t able to get the grade that I wanted, even though I had studied so hard for it. But once I was able to get past feeling bad myself I started to confront my failure and see it as a way of improvement. I started to look at what I did wrong and tried to find ways to analyze how I could improve. Mr. Tamanaha, my math teacher, really helped me understand my failures and turn them into something that I could improve on. In the syllabus of his class he would allow people to retake any test that they felt they did poorly on and, trust me, I did poorly on a lot of tests. Even though he allowed us to retake a test there was a catch to it. He would only allow someone to retake the test if they fixed the problems they missed and wrote two paragraphs about what they did wrong, explaining the steps, and how to improve. Even though it seemed like unnecessary work at the time, it helped improve my skills in his class. Mr. Tamanaha didn’t just want people to retake the test and be done with it, he wanted his students to learn from their mistakes and find ways that they may improve upon them. I am still nowhere near a math wiz, but my failure helped me improve in a subject that I am not very adept at.
Failure is a foundation for success. We will be faced with many failures in our path and we should learn from them. Rio Lindo has taught me that failure is not the end—it is an opportunity to learn, adapt, and grow. The teachers here have taught me how I can turn it into something useful in our day-to-day lives. We should learn how to grow through failure. The only way to truly succeed in life is to embrace failure, learn from it, and use it to propel ourselves forward.