It’s Okay to FAIL (Sometimes)

By the time I'm writing this article, the O and A Level results have been out for a couple of weeks now and everyone has had their time to wallow in their misery by self-imposed exile from social media and talking to people in general. I, too, have done the same thing before, but this time I've put my foot down on the matter, and it's not because I've done particularly well this session either.

By now all your exiles have been lifted (because that doesn't work and you know it) and you're now spamming motivational memes everywhere. From misappropriated quotes about believing in oneself by Lincoln to the ones about Einstein and trees and fish or something, these things are about as motivational as SHOUT's horoscope. Then there is the passive-aggressive, the people who post links to long extended articles on how "Results don't matter, Degrees don't matter, Skills do." These people have the common sense to not post motivational images, but apparently lack the depth to see what they are doing. By posting articles such as this in public, they not only label themselves as people insecure about their shortcomings, but also in a way belittle their friends who actually worked hard for their degree and good results, indirectly announcing themselves superior to them, because 'skillz'. Also, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropout comparisons. No. They dropped out of Harvard, they didn't flunk O Levels.

Now that I've thoroughly pissed off a lot of people, I'd like to say I've done a lot of these things the first time I did terribly in an exam (no memes though, God no). My intentions were nice enough, and I assume most of the others had nice intentions as well. I wanted to be motivated to do well in the next exam and wanted my fellow students to join me in my enlightened state of motivation. But after a while I realised that by doing this I wasn't really motivating myself into anything. I was just constantly denying my bad result the importance it deserved. I couldn't wish it away, so I was doing the next best thing by convincing myself it didn't matter all that much. 
But it does. 

The results aren't going away (unless repeats because yay loopholes), so the first thing you need to do is own up to it. This sounds like a really pessimistic view on things, but sugar-coating your problems or worse, still basking in past glories, will get you nowhere. It's okay to fail; it's not the end of the world but it's unacceptable to be a complete failure in life. Almost everyone gets a magical boost in motivation after a terrible result, and almost everyone uses it up in one ungodly week of studying that makes them hate education forever. So hold on to that motivation and always keep your failure at the back of your mind, and remember to always keep quiet about it. Nobody who has ever made a comeback did it by telling everyone he was going to make a comeback.