Responding to Prompts from the UC Common Application
The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Failures occur to any person. On one end, failures can result in disappointment and depression. On the other end, it can be useful. This is because they provide people with valuable lessons as well as valuable experiences to learn from. There are numerous times I experienced failures in life. My personal failure experiences proved to quite harmful at first. This is because they affected me mentally and psychologically. However, in the long run, some of my personal failure experiences proved to be very useful. I recall failing to win the Model United Club United States Competition. In this competition, I expected to win the best delegate award; unfortunately, I was unable to win. This affected my mentally and psychologically at the time, but in the long run, it helped me shape my skills and expand my knowledge and develop personally and professionally.
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In the competition, held by Model United Club, I expected to emerge victorious and win the award. When judges released the results, I was shocked to see that I was not even among the top 5. At the time, I was very frustrated with the outcome. This is due to my belief that I would never fail to win the Model United Club competition. In the competition, I expected to become the winner of the best delegate award. Probably this mentality is the reason why I did not prepare for the competition. Instead of preparing for the competition, I fixed my mind that I would win the award without any efforts.
However, this mentality to win the best delegate award easily faded away the moment I realized the competition is too challenging for me. Due to my mentality and my negligence, I failed to win the best delegate award. As a result, I became very frustrated, disappointed, and depressed. However, all of this faded away when I got home. After getting home, I started to find the reason as to why I failed. From the analysis, I realized how easy the competition was. The problem was in me. My negligence attitude to the competition made me fail the competition. Instead of preparing for the competition, I was relaxed, believing that the competition is easy to win. More to this is that I overestimated my skills and abilities. Overall, overestimating my skills and abilities and my negligence attitude made me fail to win the best delegate award.
Based on the experience and skills learned from the previous competition, I expected to win the award. However, as I failed, I realized the importance of progressing continuously. In other words, one ought not to stop in his or her progress. This is because if one stops, rivals may outpace you just like what happened to me. My failure experience was hard for me, but at the same time, it was an important lesson to learn from.
Due to the lessons learned from this failure, I have changed my attitude completely. Now, I am always concerned with my personal and professional development. It is for this reason that I keep expanding my knowledge in order to compete at the top level. More to this, I keep working on shaping my skills. My failure experience has helped me shape my skills and expand my knowledge. It has also help me develop personally and professionally.
