Failure Isn't Final by Avery

Failure Isn't Final by Avery - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Failure does not always mean termination or destruction. It isn’t always as simple as a bad grade on a test or losing a championship game when your team is counting on you. Some failures might not even seem like failures. For instance, failure to me was not going to any of my best friend’s track meets.
It may not seem like much, but missing my friend’s track season was a very crucial milestone in my path to emotional maturity. He had meets here and there and I would always have a subpar excuse not to go. It’s not that I skipped out on purpose; I wanted to see him compete, I just allowed social anxiety and laziness to stop any of my efforts. At the time, I didn’t think this was a big deal—he only came to one or two of my tennis matches, and he never distinctly invited me to any of the events.
A couple months after his track season was over, this topic came up. We were discussing how friends should support one another and I was completely blindsided by what he said. He told me that he thought I didn’t support him and wasn’t proud of him. He thought that, because I never came to any of his meets, it meant I didn’t care about his athletic accomplishments or endeavors. If you have ever been told by a dear loved one that you let them down, you can imagine how absolutely horrible I felt. I hadn’t even realized that I was doing something wrong, and I was hurting and degrading the most important person in my life.
This realization changed me on an emotional level and in how I treated other people. In the past, I had always tried to be as supportive as possible to all of my friends and family, but I was now starting to see some discrepancies. Because of my newfound awareness, I dedicated my efforts and time to showing gratitude and admiration for those I cared about. I started going out of my way to make it clearly demonstrated how proud I was of them. I started noticing the slight changes in eyeshadow color of one of my makeup-enthusiastic friends. I went to all the soccer and softball games I could. I attended household dinners with a friend who was having family issues to provide support. I absolutely loved dedicating myself to admiring those I cared about, and the admiration was wholly reciprocated.
Failure, for me, was being unsupportive of a friend when all they wanted was a little recognition. It seems like something so simple, but this oversight enriched my entire life. I became more grateful, more supportive, and more aware of how I affected others. I now believe wholeheartedly that if something matters to someone you care about—no matter how frivolous or simple—it should matter to you, too. Because of my failure, I changed for the better and, hopefully, bettered those around me as well.