Fall Goals
WILL Portfolio: Fall Goals
Another part of Women in Leadership and Learning has been setting goals for the semester to measure your growth. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t remember what my goals were at the beginning of this semester. I don’t remember what I submitted for a 1 on 1 reflection on what my goals were, either.
I do know that if I did set goals at the beginning of the semester, they would not have been met in the way I intended, because this semester did not go the way I intended it to go. I started off this semester confident and happier than I had been in years. I felt great and thought I could accomplish anything. I was going to get a great co-op for the next semester, and continue my activism of my nonprofit and the transgender activism I had started the past summer. It would be a laid back semester with less stress and more extracurricular activities. I was going to do so well in my classes that I would get my scholarship back.
But that’s not how my semester went.
This semester has been fraught with failure both in opportunities I applied for and did not get, and in events that happened throughout.
I applied for a Jewish LGBTQ fellowship and did not get it
I applied for my dream co-op job that I’ve wanted for a year and did not get it.
I applied to present my summer research at a queer conference and did not get it.
I had to drop out of the class I took for fun when I realized it was far harder than I could handle.
I had a traumatic experience with a professor that was prolonged and caused me to report to Title IX, and caused other grades to suffer.
And I did not end up with a co-op for next semester.
Failure is healthy. It is necessary to grow and learn.
A professor of mine taught me resiliency, and I forgot it this semester. She taught me to “fail hard, and fail fast”. If you are constantly wallowing in the things you didn’t get, you’ll never be able to do better. The steps to resiliency that she taught me were:
Set a time limit on feeling sad (then get back up). Sometimes feelings are overwhelming and you have to let yourself feel sad. But give yourself a time limit before you turn around and think about how to do better. There is no reason to continue to wallow in self-misery when you can take the failure and learn.
Change the tape in your head - would you tell someone you love what you’re telling yourself? I struggle a lot with negative self-talk, specifically in regards to grades. Sometimes I need to remember that I would not tell my little sister what I tell myself, and it allows me to comfort myself instead of beating myself up.
See failure as courage - I have strength because I tried. I put myself out there a lot this semester with what I have applied for, and I forget that it took courage and strength to apply for those things.
Know when to give up. Sometimes continuing to fight for something will not be worth it. I found this out with my class that I dropped. I knew it would cause more harm to me if I tried to tough out the entire semester. Knowing when to let go and give up is extremely hard but ultimately strength.
Failure is not self worth - it’s an event, not a person. This is something I constantly remind myself. It’s hard to internalize, but I tell myself when I don’t get things that these failures are events, and that they do not define my self-worth. It goes against what I have in my head, because I went through a lot of school thinking my success and failures (particularly grades) define me. The things I failed at this semester do not define who I am. I am no less of a person for succeeding in them.
Think positive in the process - I can do this as well as anyone. I know that the applications I put out were just as good as anyone else’s. I know I put out my personal best work.
I don’t remember what my goals were, but I know well what I have learned and how I have changed over the course of the semester, and I think that is just as valuable.
Learn from failure, just as much as you learn from success.