Definition: failing — “Like, you got a B in the class? OMG.”

That’s like failing, right?

That was high school. Getting F’s wasn’t really a thing unless you really put in no effort. But wait, I forgot to define one important concept.

Definition: grades — a pretty basic evaluation system typically used in educational institutions to evaluate if the students are meeting desired learning objectives.
eg “Grades, le sigh, they don’t truly measure what I know. I mean, grades don’t measure how much I know outside of school and classes and all that.”

In high school, the absurd emphasis on grades and the end goal of “getting into a good college” immediately post-high school meant that the fear of failure motivated a ton of people. People worked hard for the sake of grades, opted out of challenging courses because they’d get a lower grade than if they weren’t challenged, or some combination thereof. School wasn’t really about finding out what our interests were. It was all for the distant future we had no clear idea about, as older people in our lives messaged it such that there was no room for grade-based failure.

Folks around me were so worked up about being the best at X, whatever X was, and in turn, made the curricular environment quite competitive. So competitive, in fact, people would humblebrag about their quantitative qualifications for alpha, beta, and gamma. This competitive and metrics driven environment definitely shaped how I viewed school, learning, and the ability to (not) fail.

I walked into my first year of college, with that attitude. The first-years around me came from similar environments — the idea of failing or receiving an F in classes was not or should not be a thing. Receiving Fs was practically equivalent to failing at life. Again, the future depended on the inability to fail according to a norm, be it PhD studies, medical or law school, that coveted internship at that one giant firm, and so on. I maintained that attitude for a long time.

My second quarter, one of my instructors told me, as parting words, “Don’t be afraid to fail.” I had no idea what they meant or why they said it. I was eighteen and going through school, trying my best to not get onto academic probation wall while working at my social justice oriented campus job. What did I know about failing and being successful? People outside of my academic environment were always like — “Gee, you go to UCLA, you must be so smart, you have everything figured out.” In that, there is no expectation or possibility that failure was an option or even inevitable. Not even a little bit.

Definition: all-nighter — awake all night being allegedly productive on work. May be fueled by excessive caffeine, sugar, and other substances.

It was considered an achievement to pull all-nighters, in high school and college. There were also a lot of pressures — culturally, family, otherwise. Failing was not an option when so much was seemingly at stake. My second year, first quarter, I had resolved that I wanted to attend graduate school in math. Hence I signed myself up for a challenging upper division course, and told myself I needed to do well in it. With that mentality, I ended up not learning or retaining anything even if I put a lot of effort into it. The words in the book resembled a stream of consciousness, lectures the same. Homework had no end in sight as abstract ideas danced around the page with no meaning I could make sense of. When that quarter ended, I felt so relieved. I was finally done and finished with the final I sat through in a windowless room, and avoided earning less than a D in the class, but did I still want to continue on as a math major? Maybe my initial declaration as a sociology major my very first quarter meant something. If math was certainly this miserable, I wanted no part in it. I was ready to quit math.

Definition: academic advisor — someone who usually has your best interests at heart and gives you decent advice about your studies.

eg “I’m finding myself not liking my first few math upper division classes, so, what should I do?” “Find another major you like, go to statistics because it’s easier, go to the humanities and social science departments, or take more classes.”

My academic advisor was not useful. She gave me a list of broad options that seemed to make no sense. I liked the classes outside of math but then I recalled why I wanted to study math over sociology in the first place. I wanted to study something I could not teach myself; I wanted to challenge my brain as much as I could academically. I took more classes in math and I started courses in statistics. I took introductory physics with more mathematical background than necessary. School became cool again, but something was evading me, something I could not quite figure out what it was until it happened to me.

Definition: failure — “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.”

Math 131a: real analysis, fall quarter, my third year. It’s one of the most important classes a math major needs to take before proceeding in their studies. Coming out of an intense summer of classes and into a full fall term and overwhelmed beyond my senses, I’m still unwilling to let myself fail. Midterms were administered taken week 3 and 6, way too early to let any of the content sink in and make any sense of it. I told my peer counselor week 5 out of ten that I was going to intentionally fail the class so I could repeat it. On the evening of the Friday of week 7, I decided a “W” was probably better than a giant “F” and the stress from being in a class I could not focus further on. I’d retake the class regardless, and be able to take it easy for the last four weeks of the quarter.

In those four weeks, between weeks 8 and finals, I had some breathing room and I sweated about the “W” on my transcript. I was certainly less than a full-time student, so that would have affected my ability to remain eligible for financial aid, had I bothered to turn it in the previous spring. My health insurance, however, was less forgiving, and once they found out that I was two-thirds a full-time student, they dropped me from their coverage for two solid months. Luckily I didn’t get disgustingly sick then. The “W” still dwelled on me, I knew I would have to repeat Math 131a next term and not be able to take another course of my choice come winter term. I would need to learn the same content again. At least I had seen the content once so maybe the second time it would make sense.

Socially, on the other hand, I remembered telling an old classmate and their crowd of generally high achieving folks that I dropped a class. They looked at me as if I just revealed the unspeakable — withdrawing is a step towards failing and delaying oneself from achieving the great wide future of things in success-land. I shrugged at them (sort of like this: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), then expressing that I was entirely comfortable with my failure and completely aware of the consequences. Yes, my ability to proceed and meet the future may be delayed by a quarter. Yes, I may be taking the “W” with chillness and indifference towards opinions from other people on my failure, but lest not forget that failure is a very personal act, particularly in school.

Definition: failure — when everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and you figure out how to pick yourself back up again and come back stronger. May not be a solitary process, often involves support from other folks.

Failing is real. Feeling like a failure is another. I used the 16 units of repeat credit to retake courses I earned a C- or lower in. I went to office hours; I put time into my classes. I ate food, I read non-school books. I rode my bicycle places, I walked elsewhere. I started understanding what I was learning even if it had no immediate application. School just felt like there was less pressure from all over: myself, my peers, and my environment. I took more statistics classes to balance my course load out. I really enjoyed definition/theorem/proof style of lecture. It made sense. I finally learned how to not fear the process of failing and not perceive failure as the apocalypse of my short life so far. Grades were certainly not the precursor to the end of the world as I knew it.

Had I not failed Math 131a and decided that receiving a “W” on my transcript was worth at least the $35 it cost to withdraw, I wouldn’t have continued on studying mathematics. Had I not earned a D+ in my computer science data structures class the first time around and not re-evaluated what I clearly did wrong — not putting enough time into the class, sweating about the curve, other people’s loud opinions, course design and content, among others — and tucked my tail in like a sorry dog, I would not have continued studying mathematics and its applications into other fields like statistics and computing. Had I not had the chances to fail academically, I would still be fearing failure seeing it as a form of the end of the world, the only world where school determined my entire future. It’s one thing to do the failing, but the best part was learning how to recover from it. One of my buddies told me Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” So I kept going. I retook the classes I failed, this time, obviously going in with the understanding that I should calm my cockiness down, be more patient than ever, and use the support network available to me as well as the one I cultivated over the past few years on and off campus. Come my fourth and fifth years, I started to actually enjoy my upper division math classes, particularly in differential geometry and abstract algebra (group, ring and module theory). Thank you, failing and failure.

Success is nothing without the failures that preclude it. For someone who has typically been labeled a “success” by others, it is quite refreshing to fail and not feel “successful” all the time. Life is far from linear and failure is an inevitable part of it. I’m glad I learned to fail in the context of school, as it gave me a chance to learn how to learn for myself again. I’m glad school provided me the space to fail, especially on my transcript. School definitely wasn’t always sunshine, rainbows and unicorns, yet failing was an important part of my journey.

Courtney Lee has failed in school and is quite proud of it. Courtney is a San Francisco native and holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from UCLA. In addition to being a ScholarMatch alumna, she currently uses her mighty mathematical background at ScholarMatch as our finance, operations, and data coordinator.

#MyCollegeStory is a ScholarMatch original series highlighting the diverse and varied journeys to and through higher education. Check back each month for new stories!

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