Assignment 26A: Celebrating Failure
1) During this semester I experienced a big failure. I am an exchange student at UF for only one semester and when I arrived here I haven’t booked a flight back home. During this semester I have started to organize several trips I wanted to do afterwards. The problem is that my stay in the US is limited due to the Visa requirements. I have to leave the US 30 days after my study program ends, because the Visa will automatically expire then. However, I thought I could just easily order the normal tourist Visa afterwards to stay a little bit longer and to have more time to travel. I organized everything for an extended stay and already booked a flight home on 24th of January. I talked with my friends about my plans and they told me, that they are not sure whether it will be that simple to get a tourist Visa if I already had another Visa before. I started to make some research on the internet and realized that it could end up in big difficulties. I tried to call the Custom and Border Protection but I was not able to catch anyone, so I wrote them an email. This whole procedure took a few weeks and in the end, the only thing I could find out was that I won’t be able to order the normal tourist Visa.
I had to cancel the flight. The airline was not able to refund me, because I missed to sign up for an insurance plan. So I had to pay the whole flight and additionally to that I had to book a new flight.
2) I learned from this failure that I should think about some things more carefully before taking any actions. Sometimes it is good to let some days pass before making a decision.
3) I definitely think that failure is hard, because it can be very annoying and sometimes has massive consequences. But I also think that a failure is just given if people think it is one. If people would change their way of thinking, failure might not exists in an annoying way anymore. In my case I thought after a while, “okay, this is marked as a useful experience in my mind from now on, I will not make the same mistake again.” So actually there are just positive thoughts or useful thoughts with reference to a failure. As a result a failure might not be annoying or upsetting anymore.
This class taught me that it can be very good to experience a failure because I might generate useful knowledge from it and improve myself.
2) I learned from this failure that I should think about some things more carefully before taking any actions. Sometimes it is good to let some days pass before making a decision.
3) I definitely think that failure is hard, because it can be very annoying and sometimes has massive consequences. But I also think that a failure is just given if people think it is one. If people would change their way of thinking, failure might not exists in an annoying way anymore. In my case I thought after a while, “okay, this is marked as a useful experience in my mind from now on, I will not make the same mistake again.” So actually there are just positive thoughts or useful thoughts with reference to a failure. As a result a failure might not be annoying or upsetting anymore.
This class taught me that it can be very good to experience a failure because I might generate useful knowledge from it and improve myself.
Laura,
ReplyDeleteNot only have you learned from your own mistakes, but I have also learned something too. I too plan to study abroad and I am fearful because there are a lot of things that can go wrong and I will need to keep up with. Thank you for sharing and making this a learning experience for both of us.
Hi Laura, that seems so stressful. Like Austin said, that is a huge learning opportunity, and I'm sure you learned a lot from it. At the very least, you won't ever make that mistake again. It is often the small details that escape us, but the good news is that once we make a mistake regarding small details, we often don't repeat it.
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