I Could've Done Better... My Failure 2/22

Yeah… Although I don’t like to do it often… I had another “learning experience” in my life. To maintain the type of mentally demanding lifestyle that I have, I must manage my time exceptionally well. I’ve been doing a pretty good job up until this point, but having too much going on and not enough time to complete my tasks led to my most recent failure.

Before I jump into my experience, I would first like to throw in a shameless plug about my goal to have 25 Google Friend Connect followers by Wednesday, 2/29. If you like my blog, please follow it and help me avoid yet another setback!

Okay, now back to my most recent failure. Last week I had two midterms to study for, one on Tuesday (in Operations) and one on Wednesday (in Finance), along with an assignment due on Wednesday. I took the day off on the Friday beforehand for an extra day to study, but errands that I had to put off until then ate up most of my study time. I was fortunately able to finish up all but one section of the homework, and I was starting to feel pretty confident I was going to be prepared for my tests.

Unfortunately, Saturday and Sunday was spent studying for my Operations midterm (and I still hadn’t covered all of the material), and I had done a minimal amount of studying for the Finance midterm. Monday wasn’t much better either. Work took up about 11 hours of my day, but at least I was able to finally wrap up my Tuesday midterm, leaving my Wednesday midterm review and homework. I was becoming more and more nervous about being ready for these midterms at this point.

So now we’re at Tuesday. I took the Operations midterm, but I did not feel as good as I would have liked. There was stuff on there that if I took another hour or two to review, I would have done better on, which always frustrates me. Fortunately, at this point I was thinking all I have to do is cram for the Finance midterm and finish up the final part of the homework and I will be fine.

If only it happened that way…

That last question on my homework took up about 5 hours of my time Tuesday night. And I’m still not convinced my answer was correct. What’s worse, that left virtually no time to cram, so on Wednesday I pretty much went into the Finance test cold. The experience was similar to the Operations midterm, but worse. There were questions I knew how to do, but just forgot since I failed to review them and thus had to guess on. There were also questions that I knew how to do but took me longer to complete due to my lack of preparation. All in all, my testing experience was awful, and I know I could have done a lot better.

But what exactly could I have done better? Well first off, I should have tried knocking out that homework early on so that if I had any major issues, I could plan around that. Second, I should have started studying earlier. Even though I put a solid amount of time in for studying, it obviously wasn’t enough and studying a week before vs. the weekend before would have made a huge difference. Third, I should have leveled out my time between the two exams. I gave too much attention to Operations and not enough to Finance, and paid the price for my mistake.

As the saying goes, “You live and you learn.” I worked too hard and didn’t work smart enough. I can’t take back how I did on these midterms but I can use the mistakes I made to do way better on the finals. And if I want to pass these classes with a B and still be eligible for tuition reimbursement at my job, I will do just that.

I dig the honesty man. If everyone took responsibility the way you do and admit mistakes the world would be a better and more efficient place. I hope you don't view this experience as negative. In fact, you should take it very positively. You have a whole new view of how to manage your time and do it efficiently. Educational stress is due to procrastination. Don't get caught being stressed work ahead of schedule. Not only now have you learned this but you looked at it as giving extra motivation. BRAVO!

@Jacob Pickett Thanks man I want to be accountable so others can learn from my mistakes. It feels good have people in my corner though! Thanks for the encouragement.

As far as failing, to be honest it did hurt a bit the first few days and that is normal. But now I do view it as a positive. I can use that disappointment as fuel to the fire. I'm completely motivated now to finish strong.