Failure
/a think piece by Jen, journalism student and member of the Jumped Up Theatre Sound Board
What defines failure? Or more importantly, who defines it?
I have just finished my Level Three BTEC in Create Media Practice, and I’m moving on to study Journalism at degree level - but only because it was my second option, after I wasn’t able to do A-Levels after all: something some may consider a ‘failure’, but I consider it a blessing in disguise. School often teaches us that life is a linear path, with all the jigsaw pieces perfectly slotting together. I think it’s vital that young people know that they have so many options in life and will get second chances if things don’t go the way they hoped, which is why we should destigmatize the concept of failure.
Leaving sixth form felt like a huge risk, especially as it was something I’d worked towards for so long. I had tunnel vision: I was determined to take Psychology, History and Sociology, then study one of these subjects at university, but life had different plans for me. At the time, it was effortless to fall into the dark mindset that I’d failed not only myself, but my parents and teachers too. It is so damaging and discouraging when young people have their failure defined by those older than them, or ‘above’ them; only we should get to determine that.
I wish schools made more effort in reinforcing the fact that there are other ways to continue your education post sixteen, whether that be apprenticeships or college - and that these different options are not second-best. Secondary school can be a toxic, competitive environment, where people thrive on negativity and leech off the failures and shortcomings of others. Whilst I understand that getting good grades plays a huge role in your future, I believe the mental health of students should come first. After a hellish couple of years due to the pandemic, it’s understandable that students may not be performing at their best, or are taking less risks for fear of failing.
Risk taking, while daunting, is something that pushes you forward. A typical wallflower, I rarely participated in clubs at school and I wasn’t into sports or theatre, even though a part of me always longed to be. Being a naturally shy and anxious person, it’s been easy to say no to trying new things - because what happens if I fail, or make a fool of myself? The issue with this mindset is that if you never bleed, you are never going to grow. If you never allow yourself to fail after trying something new, you’ll never find what is truly meant for you - in my case, studying to become a journalist and learning to weave my thoughts into messages, for others to hear.
This negative attitude towards failure is so ingrained in our society that it seeps into the workplace environment, into relationships and friendships too. What if we reframed this, and instead said that it just means you have more to learn, and more growing to do? Growth means you are evolving, changing like the seasons: something I consider to be beautiful. Reframing failure as something that simply occurs when the universe wants to send you down another path is beneficial; this kind of mindset certainly provides me peace of mind. By dictionary definition, it’s a ‘lack of success’, but this doesn’t equal a lack of potential. In ‘failing’ to continue with those three subjects, I learned failures do not define you, but it is how you build yourself up from them that matters. Now, we have to neutralise failure - I think acceptance is the first step to this. Only we should get a say in what can make or break us.