Don't Worry, I Failed so you Don't Have To

“Great losses are great lessons”

Sounds like an easy enough way to live doesn’t it? Learn from your mistakes, and continuously strive towards your better self with each fall. Well if you’re anything like me, it’s good in theory, but hard in practice. It's pretty easy to forget about your strength in failures when you’re in the middle of one. Sure hindsight is 20/20, but when you’ve just failed a midterm or not gotten the co-op placement after you’ve given it your all. It’s hard to take a step back and reflect on what this can teach.

So here are a few things I’ve learned from my past mistakes from university thus far, that hopefully you can all jump skip ahead of:

Failure #1 - As a commerce kid, free electives are precious

I’m currently a 3rd year Commerce student. This means I follow a fairly rigid structure when it comes to course selection. Leaving little room to take electives. If I’m counting correctly (I’m an accounting major so I better) I will only get to take five non-commerce electives during my time at Dalhousie. Prior to this semester, the first three slots have been filled with courses that were so boring it hurt to attend. Yet, I continued to take classes I wasn’t interested in because I thought that's what I should be doing.

So for my fourth and current one, I decided to take a course that actually reflected my interests. This is a course I always joked about taking, but never thought I would. As I didn’t want to quote on quote “waste an elective”. Yet it turned out to be one of my favourite classes I’ve taken in university.

So learn from me. Don’t take a class because you feel like you should. Take a class that you’ve always wanted to! University is the time for us to explore our niches.

Failure #2 - Leaving things last minute

I, like so many before me, and so many after me, leave things to the last minute. Every year since the dawn of time I start my work just before I absolutely have to (what can I say I like to give myself some editing time). This vicious cycle may have worked in high-school. But come fall of first year I was no longer allowed the privilege to do this and get away with a good grade after it.

So learn from me: do not leave things until the end. Every grade in University counts. Point blank. So take it from me when I tell you, you will not do well if you study for Finance last minute. Or if you leave your communications report to the night before. I know it’s hard, but do things with ample time. I consciously been making this effort over my previous semesters and it definitely pays off!

Failure #3 - Spending too much time on social media

When Apple started to give out reports on how much time and on what apps you’ve been on made me rethink a lot of things. Particularly how much time I was spending on social media and networking apps. As university students, it’s hard to not be on Instagram seeing how great everyone else’s lives are. Or on Twitter reading about why the world is going down the drain.

I decided to make a change and use the screen time reports that make me self-reflect to good use. On the reports you can set a daily limit for each app. So that is what I did. Setting my social media limit per day, has pushed me to spend significantly less time on my phone and on these apps. Instead, I can use this time to do activities that are more productive and social.

So please let me be a cautionary tale. Use the time you have in school wisely and take the classes you want not one you think you should be in. Do NOT leave things to the last, it will not work out for you. And finally limit the time spend on your phone, spend it instead of doing something you love. I hope you learn from the mistakes I’ve made, and jumpskip you making them.

Quote from Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

About the author

Lily Kwiecien is a third year Commerce Student at Dalhousie University. She is the Blog Coordinator for the Rowe Women in Business Association and is currently completing her second co-op term at Killam Apartment Reit in Halifax