Failure, including failures at university, is something that every single one of us experiences many times throughout our lives. But that doesn’t mean it gets easier to deal with.
At university, you have a lot of pressure on you to do well – after all, you are paying a fortune to be there. With endless deadlines and exams, as well as social events and sporting events, you probably have a lot on your plate. When you experience failure at university, it might hit you hard.
But moving on from failure is something that will benefit you in life and it gives you an opportunity to grow. Read on for our best tips for how to deal with failures at university.
Accept Your Feelings
When you get a bad grade back, or you don’t do as well as you were expecting, the first step is to acknowledge and accept how you feel. Putting a mask on and pretending that everything is fine doesn’t help you, and you’ll just feel worse for it.
Accept your feelings and just sit with the feeling for a while. It’s okay to feel sad and upset – you’re not a robot! The faster you accept the feeling of failure, the easier it is to move on from it and start becoming proactive about it.
YOU Aren’t a Failure
So you failed a test or got a bad grade – that doesn’t mean that you yourself are a failure. It’s so important to separate the feeling of failure from yourself. We all fail at some things in life, but that doesn’t make us all failures.
If you adopt this negative way of thinking, it’s sure to impact other areas of your life and it can stop you from achieving the things you want to. Remember that you failed at one thing, and you can move onto figuring out how to succeed next time.
What Went Wrong?
When you’ve separated the failure from your sense of self, you can then move on to dissecting what happened to cause you to fail this task. Did you not study enough? Not get enough practice in? Focus on the wrong points during the task?
Look into the feedback, or request it if there wasn’t any given, and figure out what happened to make you fail. When you learn what went wrong, you can learn how to fix it and ensure that you don’t fail next time.
Talk to Someone About It
If your failure is really getting you down, don’t bottle up your feelings. Make sure to speak to somebody about it and let them know how you feel. Other people can offer you valuable insights that will help you feel better and you can learn a lot of great tips that will help you succeed next time.
When you keep it to yourself, it’s easy to warp the situation into something it’s not and it can seem a lot worse than it is. They say that a problem shared is a problem halved, and that’s very true. Talking it through with someone will let you see it through their eyes and they can take you back to reality and show you it isn’t as bad as you think it is.
Learn From It
Every failure we experience in life is a learning experience for us. It shows us that we still have things to learn and we can always improve ourselves. If everybody gave up at the first failure, we wouldn’t have a lot of great people in this world.
Understand why you failed and learn what you have to do next time. After all, you can’t succeed without failing!
You will be sure to fail at things all throughout your life, not just at university. Just know that it’s super common and it really isn’t the end of the world. Use it as an opportunity to learn, pick yourself up, and start again. You’ll be on your path to success in no time.
Looking for useful study tips to help with your next exam? Check out our blog post to learn more.
