An Incident When Failure Was Experienced - Personal Statement Example

An Incident When Failure Was Experienced al Affiliation An Incident When Failure Was Experienced Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn? There have been experiences of failure that could be recounted in varied incidents and time frames. As a young child, I remember to have experienced failure through the simple tasks that need to be undertaken but failed to be successfully accomplished; such as finishing one’s meal or trying earnestly to play a musical instrument.

At that immature age, a stage of delicate growth, failure could be perceived as a depressing state that could immediately rationalize generating fits of tantrums or irrepressible anger. One clear memory of failure was when a sibling played with one’s toy and the toy was inadvertently broken, I remember hitting my younger sibling with the broken piece on his head which caused an immediate lump to protrude. As a result, my father had to warn me sternly with a firm grip to prevent further injury to my brother and to slightly tap the hand that caused the injury.

There was a feeling of sheer embarrassment from the uncanny behavior and led to a perceived interpretation that I failed to abide by the moral conduct expected from a sibling. The warning of my father came with a reminder that he had to correct my mistake and prevent any further injury from happening; not because he does not love me – but more so, he emphasized that he does. He said that it was really a natural reaction for me to get angry at what happened; but at any cost, I should not have inflicted any injury or pain to my sibling.

Since he loves me so much, he had to give me the lesson so that I would not repeat the same mistake in the future. And since then, I never even dared hurting my sibling again – or any other individual for that matter. What initially was perceived to be a failure to abide by the expected ethical and moral behavior provided the impetus for instilling a lesson on the virtues of patience and love. When I entered school, there were various scenarios of failure in terms of the inability to reach or attain an exemplary grade.

It could be true that I never failed any subject or course in any academic level, but there is still a sense of failure for not being able to attain a rating that is expected. For instance, in an English class where there have been several home works requiring composition of varied literary discourses: different kinds of essays (argumentative, narrative, and persuasive), poems, research papers, or rhetorical analysis of other literary works. In all of these compositional assignments, I have always tried my very best to comply with the requirements of the discourse through following the instructions in greater detail.

However, more than half of the times, the results proved to be unsatisfactory: there were a number of grammatical errors; the sentence structure needs to be improved; proofreading was unsubstantial; choice of vocabulary was limited; and overall rating failed to even reach what one was expecting to get. In these instances, I felt like I was a dejected loser; a trying hard novice; and an incompetent writer. At first, these outcomes put me down more; made me cringe in an inner shell. I felt more afraid to try to improve the discourses that I have written for fear that more depressing feedback might be relayed.

However, eventually, with encouragement and positive messages relayed by my instructor, I slowly gained confidence with the improvement in writing skills. As such, the lessons learned during the process included pointing out the mistakes that were committed; addressing the weaknesses; and avoiding similar mistakes in future writing assignments. I realized that the comments and feedbacks that were initially relayed; though they contained my weaknesses and points of failures, were instrumental in the development of skills needed in writing.

Thus, concurrent with addressing these weaknesses is the improvement in writing skills through minimizing grammatical errors, enhancing the development of sentence structures, and observing the need to proofread one’s work more comprehensively prior to final submission. Likewise, one’s competence in writing was further entrenched; coupled with a commensurate improvement in self-confidence. In sum, I have realized from different experiences of failure that these have provided opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Many great inventors and famous people have confirmed that only through bravely facing the challenges and potentials for failure would new discoveries, innovations, and creative outcomes successfully emerge.