We have all failed before; in our relationships, businesses, academics et al. If anyone ever told you they’ve never failed before, it’s either they’re not telling you the whole truth, or they’ve never tried anything before. Whichever way it may be, we’ve all failed in one thing or the other. But the most important question is: Is our failure supposed to end there? No, I don’t think so. Should we continue repeating them over and over? Not at all!!
I believe without any shadow of doubt that failure has more to offer us than success. I know this might come to you as a shock. Why do I say this? Failure is actually not meant to break us down even though it normally comes with emotional instability. It’s meant to be a learning process, if only we’ll carefully learn the lessons. Let failure be your teacher, but not your cheater.
This article will be in three parts. I’ll be engaging you on this subject within the next few weeks to aptly relate to you a very important incident in my life while I was a student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (K.N.U.S.T.) in Kumasi.
As an engineering student, I was supposed to take a course in Mathematics; as is custom to every engineering programme. This course commanded a whopping 4-credit hours. That means whichever mark you made in the exam would be multiplied by 4. And this course had the highest credit points in the college.
As a “shark” in high school mathematics, I was pretty confident I was going to replicate my sterling performance in the course. When we began the first semester of the first year, I missed no class. I guess I was seated at the front seat. I attended every lecture including tutorials. I committed at least an hour a day just for this course.
During the exam, I wrote it the very best I knew I could, at least in my own opinion. I already gave myself a possible range within which my grade in the course would fall. We vacated and left for our homes. The second semester began and we were in school to see our previous semester’s grades. Being the first exam results we were expecting to see, we were so upbeat and expectant. Now the time had come and I took my result slip. My eye first caught the grade I made in Mathematics. And guess what I made? Did you say 95%? You must be joking. I made 40%.
What? Can you believe that? With all my efforts, sleepless nights and commitment, this was all the lecturer gave me? I was angry. I got so furious. I knew my blood got so hot and on fire that the Ghana National Fire Service might not be able to put off the fire in me, no matter how hard they tried. Why would I waste all my time and make just a sickly 40% in a course that contributed and impacted significantly to my final results? Irrespective of how well I did in the other courses, the poor performance in mathematics had a downward effect on my CWA (other universities call it grade point).
I thought of giving up in my commitment to the course. After all it wasn’t worth the fight! And to add pain to injury, my lecturer came to the first class for the second semester after we had taken our results and said, “Those of you who made exactly 40% actually trailed the course, but to avoid trailing any student, I decided to top-up to make it 40%.” You can imagine how I was boiling within. It was a big blow.
But I didn’t have to be in that pity party forever. Or my dream of making a first class would be dashed. I had to psyche myself up. I had to study hard again to see if it would be worth a second try. I sat for the exam in the second semester. The results came after a long vacation. And this time around I made an ‘A’. And this had a very significant impact on my final class till I completed.
Now, the main motive behind this article is not to blow my trumpet of what a great mathematician I was in the university. It is an article to relate to you how I was able to turn this failure into success. Join me in the second part of this 3-part series to ascertain how it all happened, and how you can be able to learn from my story to turn any failure you face along life’s path into a resounding success.
This article was written by;
Jonathan Adzokpe,
Host of Motivational Arena,
A weekend motivational radio talk show
On Nash Radio every Saturday from
10:00 to 11:00 GMT live at www.radionash.com
