Being a post-secondary student in this day and age is not an easy experience. We’re anxious, we’re stressed and many of us are suffering from imposter syndrome. Dr. Dawn Bazely’s advice for us is to learn how to overcome failure.
I couldn’t agree more.
I feel like we’re always being told that we need to get good grades so we can get a good job and live a happy life – so what happens when we fail a test? A lot of us just shut down. We are overcome by this “failure” to maintain a perfect GPA and go into a self-sabotaging spiral. We take academic failure much too harshly and let it affect our mental health, our motivation and productivity – or at least I do.
Thus, learning to accept and overcome failure is a very important skill. It is so much more beneficial to grow from it, learn from your mistakes and improve rather than succumb to the failure. And this is a transferable skill. For example, if you fail to get a job you applied for; the result should not be you giving up and self-loathing, it should be you getting back up and applying for more.
We need to accept that failure is not always a bad thing. It is more so a learning opportunity to better ourselves. Failure allows us to identify and improve our weaknesses. It allows us to build resilience and stronger character in the long run.
To listen to Dr. Bazely’s full podcast on People Behind the Science with Dr. Marie McNeeley, please follow this link. The mention of overcoming failure was said at 1:01:20, but there are many other gems of advice near the end of the podcast, like the importance of diversifying your mentors. I strongly recommend you give it a listen – especially the last 10 minutes!
References
McNeeley, Marie. “174: Dr. Dawn Bazely: Investigating the Intriguing Interactions between Animals and Plants.” People Behind the Science Podcast, PBtS, 31 Oct. 2014. https://www.peoplebehindthescience.com/dr-dawn-bazely/#volume
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 