How to overcome academic failure?
Keywords: academia, effects, disappointment, purpose, inquiries, stories, discouraging, guidance, progress, desire, mind, assignment, yourself, failure, burdensome.
We have a deep love for learning. We are drawn to academia because it provides us with a sense of purpose, connection, and even aesthetics. But it’s not always simple, and dealing with this occasionally burdensome aspect of life can be daunting. In this unofficial series, we respond to your inquiries, share our insights, and provide guidance for navigating the academic seas while keeping community and health in mind. Our goal is to provide as much support and well-being for one other as we can so that academia can be a period of progress.
If it hasn’t happened, there may come a time in your academic career when you don’t receive what you desire. It’s possible that you won’t be accepted to the college or exclusive programme that would be best for your career project. Maybe the assignment you put a lot of effort into and really believed in won’t get you the mark you wanted. Perhaps someone with greater connections will land the internship that would have been perfect for you instead of you. It’s possible that you won’t receive funding to complete your thesis. It’s possible that you’ll need to start looking for work after that and that you won’t be hired immediately away.
GIVE YOURSELF A TIME TO GRIEVE.
Take this opportunity to fully process your disappointment. Allow yourself to feel really awful and to scream to everyone how unjust it is. You put in a lot of effort, you deserved to achieve, but you weren’t able to. For a little period of time, it’s normal to feel irate and sorry for oneself. Long-term effects of not allowing yourself to grieve will be greater than those of allowing yourself a moment to do so.
DON’T RUSH INTO ANYTHING.
Once you’ve successfully completed step one, you might start to feel a void setting in. It’s only natural: all your time, efforts, and mental energy were set on one goal, and once you’ve failed to achieve it the way you thought you would, you find yourself without any immediate purpose. You therefore run the risk of rushing into a new endeavor without thinking it through — anything not to have so much time for yourself in your hands. Don’t avoid this free time.
STAY AWAY FROM NEGATIVE INFLUENCES.
If you’ve ever entered a very selective field, you know the type of people I am about to talk about: they keep going on and on about how your career of choice is both incredibly hard to get into and not so rewarding once you do ; they adopt a know-it-all attitude to explain that the game is rigged from the start, but that it can’t fool them because they are better informed; they share discouraging stories about that one person five years ago who succeeded in this very selective field without even trying and that other one who never got to realize their dream, no matter how hard they tried. All of this is not only useless to you, but stress-inducing.
If it is really taking a toll on your body or mind, you can surely join our discord server, where you can meet people from different backgrounds, with positive vibes, which can motivate you and make your day. You can chill there and hangout with people around and then get back to your routine.
