How To Fail in College: A Guide To College Success

How to fail in college

Anyone that tries something new will fail at something sooner or later. Failure is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to define your life. Unfortunately, it feels yucky and can cause you to give up or just not try because you want to avoid that painful feeling.

Afterall, you won’t have any regrets if you don’t try, right?

Wrong!

The False Philosophy of No Regrets

You want to live by the (false) philosophy of “No regrets!”, but  this outlook can actually be harmful by not allowing you the ability to learn from your mistakes. Regret can be a powerful tool if you let it. That painful feeling of failure and regret is a just a message you can choose to learn from and I can show you how. Don’t let failure stop you from trying because learning from your mistakes is when growth happens.

How the pros succeed

You see it play out all the time in sports. Professional athletes study videos of their past games to see how and why they made mistakes so they can do better next time. Why then do you not allow yourself the same reflection with traditional classes, grades, or other areas of life? Instead, it’s often internalized and you begin to believe that you’re just not good at math and you should choose a college major that plays to your strengths. Or you’re not good at resolving conflict or handling money or whatever the skill or subject.

Not trying isn’t the answer

Don’t get me wrong, choosing not to try can seem like the easier path with less friction, but you’d doing yourself a huge disservice. By choosing not to try, you’re telling yourself that when something is hard that must mean it’s not for you. However, in reality you learn more from your mistakes and grow into better humans when you make mistakes and take the time to reflect on them in a non-judgmental way instead of shying away from them.

Failure Does NOT Define You… Unless you let it.

Failure can feel like a critique on you as a person, but if you want to do well in school it’s imperative that you separate feelings from the failures AND reflect on what, how, and why the mistakes happened in order to learn from them. The same applies to other mistakes in life. I’m not saying it will be easy. You will need to show yourself some compassion and not judge yourself with a critical eye, but it is so worth examining.

That’s why I’ve made this workbook for you. It includes strategies and exercises to overcome challenges that may arise during that first year of college or in life in general!

I want to help you make the transition from internalizing those failures to learning from them.

Preparing for Failure: College Edition