I got a C on my very first essay in Ms. Tidey’s freshman English class.  The essay was on Fahrenheit 451, a book that I’d breezed through over the summer.  It wasn’t an F, but it was a C and it was heartbreaking.
Throughout middle and elementary school, I’d loved English class.  I was a voracious reader and I actually enjoyed writing essays.  I had never gotten a B, let alone a C.
I went crying to Ms. Tidey, asking for some explanation: in my mind I was a hard worker, I’d read the book, I didn’t feel I deserved the grade.
I stood there, an overeager, teary girl, begging for an answer – and Ms. Tidey smiled.
I was caught off guard.  Not only did she give me a reason, Ms. Tidey told me what I could do to be better.  She gave me a second chance.  She turned my personal failure into an opportunity for learning.
That lesson that I learned in Ms. Tidey’s class epitomized my experience at Laguna Blanca as a whole.
In the last four years, in Geometry and AP Spanish and Biology, I have learned how to fail – and, more importantly, how to be okay with it.
Recently, I sat in on a conversation between several seniors taking Calculus.
“It’s a lot of work, and sometimes you can’t believe how often you fail,” said one.
“But that’s the point of the class.  You fail now so you pass later,” said another.
We all know that our education at Laguna isn’t going to be a cakewalk.  But it can be a challenge for students to relinquish control and accept the fact that they might not graduate with perfect grades.
As crazy at it seems, not everything goes your way in life.  No matter how hard a worker you are, there will come a time when you will fail.  It’s inevitable: you might not get that big promotion, you might not even get hired.
Accepting failure doesn’t mean letting the disappointment overcome you, it means taking that loss and learning from it.
The ability to fall down and stand back up with a new sense of purpose is possibly the greatest takeaway I got from my time here.  I learned how to fail, and it is something I will undoubtably carry with me for the rest of my life.
Maya Angelou once said, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
These are words to live by, and words that I will hold onto as I walk out of the arch for the last time after graduation.
I intend on failing for the rest of my life, and I intend on growing because of each and every failure.
Failure isn’t a pitfall, it is a jumping-off point.