Celebrating Failure
My Failure
One (or rather many times) that I've failed this semester has to be in my Programming class. We get lab assignments almost every week, and when we don't, we usually get a big project. And from the very first lab assignment, I noticed the challenge that this class was going to be. The Professor, Joshua Fox The Great, has a rather interesting philosophy: he doesn't teach everything we'll ever need for our assignments or projects, just a good amount. If there are any specifics that we need (or as it is in most cases we don't need but still want to use) that's up to us to learn, research, and implement. And no, that's not a complaint. He is arguably the best instructor in U.F, let alone the CISE department. (Sorry Dr. Pryor)
In every assignment, there was always that time when I thought this was harder than I had ever expected, after (surprisingly) cruising through Programming 1 without a problem. Yet, after an increasing amount of time with every assignment, I managed to find an answer to my problem, work around it, and finish each assignment.
For example, we are working on a Minesweeper project, which seemed impossible at the beginning because we had to download an external library, use different namespaces, enums, deal with textures, windows, all of which we had not done before, and now we had an entire project (and a big part of our grade) that depended on us learning how to do this. At the beginning, I wasn't making any progress at all, but after hours and hours of coding, deleting, debugging, and refactoring, I got mine to a semi-stable state. A few more bug fixes and I'm, done. But if you have programmed before, those can take anywhere from under a minute, to a few hours.
Welcome to Programming! 🙃🙃🙃
One (or rather many times) that I've failed this semester has to be in my Programming class. We get lab assignments almost every week, and when we don't, we usually get a big project. And from the very first lab assignment, I noticed the challenge that this class was going to be. The Professor, Joshua Fox The Great, has a rather interesting philosophy: he doesn't teach everything we'll ever need for our assignments or projects, just a good amount. If there are any specifics that we need (or as it is in most cases we don't need but still want to use) that's up to us to learn, research, and implement. And no, that's not a complaint. He is arguably the best instructor in U.F, let alone the CISE department. (Sorry Dr. Pryor)
In every assignment, there was always that time when I thought this was harder than I had ever expected, after (surprisingly) cruising through Programming 1 without a problem. Yet, after an increasing amount of time with every assignment, I managed to find an answer to my problem, work around it, and finish each assignment.
For example, we are working on a Minesweeper project, which seemed impossible at the beginning because we had to download an external library, use different namespaces, enums, deal with textures, windows, all of which we had not done before, and now we had an entire project (and a big part of our grade) that depended on us learning how to do this. At the beginning, I wasn't making any progress at all, but after hours and hours of coding, deleting, debugging, and refactoring, I got mine to a semi-stable state. A few more bug fixes and I'm, done. But if you have programmed before, those can take anywhere from under a minute, to a few hours.
Welcome to Programming! 🙃🙃🙃
What I learned
I learned Programming!
Ok, I learned more than that. For every problem you may ever have, hundreds of people have probably already gone through that, and are willing to help (all hail the mighty StackOverflow). So whenever there's something I can't figure out how to do, I obviously learned that more often than not, it's possible, so I keep trying. And if I still can't figure it out, ask for help. Other times, it's actually easy to understand if you slow down, take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. To quote the fictional J. Daniel Atlas: "The closer you look, the less you see".
I learned Programming!
Ok, I learned more than that. For every problem you may ever have, hundreds of people have probably already gone through that, and are willing to help (all hail the mighty StackOverflow). So whenever there's something I can't figure out how to do, I obviously learned that more often than not, it's possible, so I keep trying. And if I still can't figure it out, ask for help. Other times, it's actually easy to understand if you slow down, take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. To quote the fictional J. Daniel Atlas: "The closer you look, the less you see".
Reflection
Yes, failing is hard. But it's something I'm sort of used to. So whenever I fail at something, I try it again, paying attention to what I might have done wrong the first time, and changing my approach. If I fail again, do it all over again. Attitude-wise, I don't think I react to it any differently than I react to anything else. I always make an effort to stay positive and somewhat happy, and even when I fail at something, I remain the same. But not everyone is like that, and that's okay (and probably normal). As long as you don't let that one failure ruin your entire life.
Yes, failing is hard. But it's something I'm sort of used to. So whenever I fail at something, I try it again, paying attention to what I might have done wrong the first time, and changing my approach. If I fail again, do it all over again. Attitude-wise, I don't think I react to it any differently than I react to anything else. I always make an effort to stay positive and somewhat happy, and even when I fail at something, I remain the same. But not everyone is like that, and that's okay (and probably normal). As long as you don't let that one failure ruin your entire life.
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