Midterms are over. This time, you truly tried your best and put in the effort to do well on your exams. Going into each exam, you were confident, because there is no way the endless hours you have devoted and countless times you have gone over the material will betray you. Once the anxiety that has been pressing on you the past few weeks finally leaves you to relax and ease off, you are left with only the comforting feeling of having done well on the exam.
Until the grades come out.
There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when, after all the late nights and early mornings, all the eating while memorizing and canceling plans to stay in and study, you get the lowest grade you could have ever imagined. In plain words, it is a stab in the back. You feel defeated and betrayed and trace back to the very moment you were taking that exam, speculating just where you may have gone wrong. And when you find that very point, it haunts you the rest of the day doing endless simulations in your mind of you not making any mistakes, realizing how, in hindsight, it was such a simple problem, and ultimately, how happy and worthwhile you could have been had you not been so “stupid.” Nonetheless, the cold hard truth is right before you in your hands and no matter how devastating it may feel, there is nothing you can do about it.
Now, in this situation, there are three options. First, you can get on a time machine and conveniently go back to when you were taking the exam and fix all your problems. Another is you just succumb to the result and decide that no matter how hard you try, you will never be enough. Lastly, you can admit that you have made a mistake, toughen up, and try harder next time.
Unfortunately, as ideal as it may be, until scientists miraculously come up with a way to invent time machines, the first option is out of the question. So while your next instinct is to choose the second selection – just giving up on everything like everything did on you, you look down the paths of option number two and three.
Route number two will feel way better for the time being, because you do not have to put in as much effort as you used to. On the next exam, you will probably get bad results but it will not sting because you saw it coming. But at the same time, you will watch your past endeavors go to waste and enter a vicious cycle of being convinced you are not good enough and ruining your next exam again.
Route number three will be painful at first. Having to admit your shortcomings and to move on may feel like denying all the blood, sweat, and tears. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that you will not end up in the same situation where you work hard but still face failure. However, without a doubt, it will guarantee you a higher chance of success and during the process, with every score you lose, you will still earn resilience, perseverance, and determination in return.
Understandably, at the end of this long and heavy contemplation, you might still opt for the second choice and it is completely fine to do so. After all, everyone wants to live a stress free life at the end of the day. But at the same time, it is without a doubt that no successful person has ever made their way up by giving up.
They say success is a mixture of luck and hard work. So unless you are a fortune teller capable of seeing what luck is ahead of you, the only thing you can do is to carry on, persevere through rocky times, preparing yourself for when that very luck is granted to you.