26A - Celebrating Failure

Failing is something that I really don’t like. To be fair, no one does, but once I’ve been told I can’t do something (or if I don’t succeed at something), I try to find out how I can. Which ranges from getting free food and negotiating down a motorcycle price over $500, to riding over 1,000 miles in under 24 hours. But those are things that I accomplished this semester, and one of my favorite – albeit frustrating – failures was being rejected by one of the coolest persons I have ever met. I had asked a girl out that I had “known” from a previous semester. I didn’t know her name or really anything about her, I just knew that she seemed intelligent and had a sense of humor. We went out for a week, enjoyed each other’s company, had a great time. Both of us said so multiple times. But after the fourth date in one week, she suggested that we don’t hangout again. She claimed she didn’t want to get attached since she had already had some boyfriends in college, and just wanted to be single for a while. I was a little confused, as we had kinda reached a point where she said I was off the market just two days before, and I was content with that. On top of that, I really liked her, she was similar to me in ways I never expected to find in someone else, and better at me in things that most girls weren’t. Regardless of that, she wanted us to stop seeing each other. So, I respected that and haven’t seen her since.

I’m not sure I learned very much from that directly – besides to not trust what someone tells you when you’re just getting to know them. But, I think that’s obvious to a certain extent and if you follow that too closely, you’ll live a very pessimistic life and may never be close with anyone. It was about a week afterwards that I figured out what I wanted to learn. I had done pretty much everything right (subjectively, of course), but something wasn’t quiet right for them. Therefore, I wanted to improve myself in just about everything until I was sure that next time I met someone like her, I wouldn’t be in a similar situation. I started working on my soft skills, I became a TA and I’m going to be an RA next year. I’m much more involved in numerous hobbies, ranging from MMA and salsa dancing to challenge motorcycle rides and guitar. I received a scholarship from my college department (Work-Life balance), and I’ve made a lot of new friends. I’ve also gone on over half a dozen dates, pretty much working on everything I can think of. I still haven’t met anyone that measures up to the person that started this, but it has just pushed me harder to be better and work on improving myself even more. As annoying as it was that I was rejected, it pushed me to accomplish things that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I know people that can get me into numerous clubs, bars, and concerts for free. I’m much more well-rounded. I’m much better at first dates. I’m doing a lot of cool things that make me happy, and I’m attempting challenges with hardly any hesitation. I just learned that the only thing I can really control is myself, so I’m going to do the best I can and wait until I find someone else that can give me chills like she did. And oddly enough, I’m happy doing that.

Failure isn’t my favorite way to say what is happening when I don’t succeed (but yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening). I like to think that I’ve got something to improve on, that I was close, and that I’ve got a chance next time. I’m usually pretty embarrassed and frustrated, especially since I can be a little competitive, but I tend analyze what went wrong, and work on improving those things until I can do something to my level of satisfaction. This class never really changed my view on what to do after failure, but it did help me realize how much of entrepreneurship is failure.