Celebrating My Failure

I had graduated with my AA from high school, so I was only supposed to be at U.F for two year. Meaning I would graduate at 19 years old. Well that didn’t happen. When you do dual enrollment in high school you have the choice of just getting rid of general classes like english and algebra, or concentrating your AA in your field and getting rid of some of your pre-recs as well. Well I was an optimistic little senior and I got my AA in business administration. I don’t regret getting my AA but I regret doing my pre-recs. While in high school I took financial and managerial accounting and calculus, to mention a few. I got practically perfect 100 in these classes. But I have failed at a lot of things in recent year. I was not much to take failure lightly because it rarely used to happen to me, but ever since I’ve started collage that’s not the case anymore. My freshman year here I was very optimistic and motivated, my adviser put me in 3 semi-easy classes. I took management and marketing and I had a solid B in these classes and then my grandma passed away on the same week I had both those finals. While my family all left to go arrange the funeral in Puerto Rico I was stuck here in Gainesville taking finals. I did awful on them and ended up with C+s on both classes and I was so mad about that. Other than that all was good that fall. But my dual enrollment days where about to catch up to me.

I’m an accounting major so when I came to U.F with all these credits my adviser stuck me into junior level accounting classes. So my first spring semester I was taking FAR1, BP, CAL2, and International business writing. Well I didn’t remember anything from Financial and Managerial, and these classes I was taking now where 10x harder than what I took in my dual enrollment days. It was awful to say the least. At the end of that semester I dropped FAR1 and got a W and I did alright on the other 3 classes. At this point in my life I thought things could not get worse, I would just retake FAR1 in the fall if I anything I would be graduating a semester late, well I was wrong again.

After finals my doctor saw that my spine was twisting on me, to bare you the details this is really bad and I was scheduled for emergency surgery June of that summer. I was in the hospital for a really long time, I lost a lot weight, and now I have two bars and 23 screws holding my spine in place. My doctor told me not to go to school in the fall because my recovery was looking at about 4-5months. Well I didn’t listen, I said I would be ok and I started fall classes like everyone else. That semester was one of the hardest times I’ve ever been through, with school and medical complications (ill save you the details again) I failed Far1 for a second time, so that didn’t help and my graduation year has been pushed back for about a year. I did take FAR1 for a 3^rd time, and if you were wondering I did pass. Weirdly enough being an accountant is my dream and I haven’t given up on it.

Right now this is all in the past for me, and I have honestly learned a lot from this and all my failures. I’m a strong believer that things happen for a reason, but I have God and my family and friends to thank for everything I have accomplished since then. Failure is hard and I would honestly try to avoid it at all cost, but sometimes it’s just unavoidable. But it’s important to embrace your failures and learned from them. Cause I could have switched majors easy when I failed my class for a second time, and it honestly took a lot for me to sit through the same class for a third time. If anything I’m glad this class is encouraging us to share our failure story, because you are honestly not alone.