How to Deal With Failure in College

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” — Napoleon Hill

Have you just failed in a subject, semester or worse you got a back for a year? It’s true that no one likes to fail, regardless of whether you are a class topper or a backbencher. The sentiment of disappointment can be comprehended by those, who experienced failure, life gets stopped when the result comes out, family pressure, peer pressure, and that feeling, when you are only in the group who got failed. Whether you are in the first year of college or final, failure can not stop you from moving forward in life. Yes, it may delay your degree, but after a few years later, when you’ll look back to those days. You will laugh at yourself, I was so fooled that I thought my life was over in the wake of flopping in college. Our society, family, and the environment around us only appreciate those who come first not to those who failed, maybe they have been putting the same effort as the topper of the class.

Failure is just a part of the process, which indicates that your effort was not enough to take you to the next step. Also, we ought to never be embarrassed about our disappointment, nobody has made their progress in only one try. Top sportsmen, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and billionaires all have felt like giving up at some point in their life, but they knew that quitting is easy, and success requires effort.

First of all, you need to understand that, failing is normal, you have the right to fail, that is the reason universities school allows you to ponder hard, and conquer your failure in the next try. But it doesn’t mean you should prepare to fail. When I was in the second year of college I got back in 2 subjects, and that was the first time I got failed in my life, I never failed in any subject or class throughout my school. When the result came out, I was shocked for a while because in the worst case I was expecting to fail only in maths. Yes, it felt bad, I wanted to cry, I was feeling so ashamed t, Even I lied to my parents that the result was good.

How to Face the Failure in College

• Accept the failure, there’s no shame in it
• Take a break and recharge yourself
• Find the cause behind your failure
• Change your mindset, prepare an action plan
• Ask for advice and help from friends & professors
• Develop self-discipline
• Make a smart Study plan
• Hard work with smart work.

Accept the failure, there’s no shame in it

Accepting failure is the first step in order to deal with your failure if you want to cry then cry. Share your feelings with your close ones or with your family. Concealing your emotions inside won’t help anyway, and later this hidden feeling will try again and again to pop up and make you feel frustrated. Once you have accepted this, it will be easy to overcome it, things take the time that can be a few days, weeks or maybe months.

Take a break and recharge yourself

Keeping your mind with the same surroundings and environment sometimes gives you a mental blockage that can hold your thinking forward. When you are going through a bad phase, and you are not able to think anything better no matter how hard you are trying. Take a break, go to a place where you wanted to go. It may sound inverse to certain individuals that subsequent getting failed in college, how someone thinks of going on a vacation instead of studying. But the brain needs a break to recharge it when you go to any new place, your daily routine will change even regular thinking as well. You will get time to go deep inside your thinking to understand what needs to be kept and what needs to be removed from the mind to prepare yourself and your mind to face the future.

Find the cause behind your failure

Whenever something wrong happens with us, the first thought that comes in our mind is why me? Sometimes things are not in our control but most of the time they are. If you fail in any subject, chances are that you are weak in that subject or you have not prepared enough for that subject. So instead of looking for an answer why me? start asking questions to yourself. Are you good at that subject, Have you studied hard before the exam, and keep looking unless you find the true cause behind your failure?

Change your mindset, prepare an action plan

If you want to win the race on the ground, first you have to win the race in your mind. Every day we do different kinds of activities, and those activities are based on our mindset. A mindset defines how we are going to spend our time, day and the rest of our life. Not everyone has the same mindset, it depends where you have lived, how your family raised you different other things. Most successful people have the same mindset, a positive thinking process, a clear goal, and last a smart action plan to achieve those goals. Below is a list of an action plan that everyone should have-

• Set a goal for the semester/ Year
• Create a deadline
• Monitor where you spend time
• Create weekly / monthly goals
• Include things that give you happiness/ relax
• Review your action plan

Set a goal for the next semester/ Year

To reach anywhere you need to know where you want to go, without having a clear goal you cannot achieve them. Set a goal for your semester for the current academic year. A goal can be getting a very good grade in the coming final exam, clear a backlog from your previous semester. However, how good you got in school or in college is going to help you your whole life, but having a good on your mark sheet will add credibility to your profile and make you feel more confident about yourself.

Create a deadline

Without having a deadline you can not track your progress, creating a deadline for your goal can help you understand where you and how much time you need to reach that goal. Having a clear goal will keep you disciplined and you can spend your time in a more productive way.

Monitor where you spend time

Everybody has a similar 24 hours, and it relies upon you how gainfully you will spend it. Following your time each day can assist you with understanding your time management. After monitoring your time for a week can you help to analyses, that where you spend your major share of time, how much time you spend on studies, how much time spent on something that is not going to compensate you over the long haul, how much time you spend on contemplates, how much time spent on something that is not going to compensate you over the long haul, additionally how much time you’re squandering with companions for hanging out, and doing things which have no ROI(return of investment). After monitoring your time for a week, you can easily understand where you spend your time. You can easily cut down those habits, which are wasting your time, and add more time to studies to achieve your goals.

Set weekly / monthly goals (Measurable)

A big goal can be divided into monthly, weekly and daily goals. The more clear you know your goals, the more possibilities you will accomplish them. Break your big goals into monthly goals, monthly goals into weekly and then set your weekly goals into daily goals. Every day when you know goals for the day, you can easily plan your day. What time you will set off for college when you will return. When you’ll start to study and different other things. When you plan your day then you have control of your time.

Include things that give you happiness/ relax

Life shouldn’t be always hard while creating your action plan make sure you include those things that you truly appreciate. This gives you a bit of fulfilment or bliss, it can be anything such as playing cricket on the weekend, spending time with your family. Or learning a skill that is not a part of your academic curriculum.

Review your action plan

Nothing can be perfect in one try, everything needs changes, modification, and upgrading. The same applies to your action plan, after time to time you need to analyze your progress, are you on the track, is there anything blocking your progress, etc. Perhaps you have to bring a few changes to your activity plan so as to make it increasingly powerful.

Ask for advice and help from friends & professors

There is nothing wrong with asking for help or suggestions for your professors or friends, everyone was a student once, and everyone has gone through that phase. So ask for help from your professor, if he/she can give extra time to clear your doubt, and most of the time they will say yes. There must be a few students who are doing well in studies, making them friends or asking for help from them can help you understand how they study or prepare for the exam, how they manage their time and different other things which you adopt from them.

Develop self-discipline

Like the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.”. By simply removing your biggest temptations from your environment, you will greatly improve your self-discipline. Self-discipline is all about getting control of life, instead of leaving it on autopilot. Self-discipline forces and motivates you to do things which are important whether you feel like doing it or not. Self-discipline is not something you get from reading a book or gathering a lot of knowledge from the internet. Self- discipline is a lifelong process that requires effort every day, initially, it can feel hard to develop and you’ll quit it many times. But you have to develop it and start practising it in your every day, you will start seeing a lot of difference in your life

Hard work with smart work.

Hard work and smart work go hand in hand. There is no doubt that you need to work hard to create a foundation for great achievements. However, if you work smart, you can do the same amount of work faster and efficiently. You need to push yourself to practice both hard work and smart work simultaneously.

Make a smart Study plan

• Attend classes or get the notes
• Make a daily habit for study
• Schedule your study time when it’s least distracting
• Make your study plan after getting the dates
• Spend more time where you are weak
• Get into the geek groups someway
• Start preparing in advance for every subject
• Test what you have prepared so far
• Don’t keep anything for the last moment

Don’t forget to enjoy your college life, don’t all the classes have 4 walls

If you put in some effort, you can make the best of your college life. College is a foundation of your coming life, where you don’t just graduate with a degree, but a place where you learn the best experiences of your life, making life-long friends. A few of them will stay in touch with you even after college. A few lucky people get their true love during college. Studying should always be your first priority, but there are a lot of things that you must experience in your college life, travel to different places whenever you get time, apply for an internship in summer and winter holiday. Participate in different activities and college fest, and the last always remember this, the grade doesn’t define your future and don’t all the classes have 4 walls. And there are a lot of experiences waiting for you after college.