Hello bloggo friendos! I'm writing this blog on Monday the 4th of March but I have no idea whether I'll post it today, tomorrow, or later in the week, but I'm just glad I've gotten an idea for a blog topic. I feel like lately I've been lacking a lot of inspiration and I don't know why that is, getting Benji has been wonderful but it does mean a lot of my time is focused on him, and we also just moved house so I am trying to get used to a new space. I actually thought I'd be MORE motivated once we moved, but I just haven't gotten into my rhythm yet, I will get there soon. I think it'll be a lot easier once Benji is allowed out for walks - that's gonna be a fun thing to vlog/write about hehe.
Anyway, in full transparency, I have been searching Google, looking on chatgpt for blog ideas but nothing was really jumping out at me and today, something finally did - and that's failure. I feel like this is something that people don't like to talk about that much and I get it, failure is scary. Nobody wants to fail or become a failure. But I'm here today, to show you why it's okay and important to embrace failure (this sounds like a TEDTALK LOL).
So I have A LOT of times in my life where I've failed at things and it has gotten me down a lot, especially when other people have critiqued me or just looked down upon me for it. But failure is okay. Let me tell you why.
Now I was a pretty smart kid back in the day. Well, I'd like to think so but the imposter syndrome is starting to kick in of "no, you weren't" but I even asked my year 8 teacher to prepare me more for high school and he didn't so I went to another teacher who gave me a research assignment - that was pretty cool of her, shout out to her if she's ever around. Year 8 is the last year of primary/intermediate school before high school in NZ (NZ goes year 1 - year 13). Thinking back on that, I kinda feel like that was very nerdy of me. Anyway, I don't remember failing many things in primary school - I was never at the top of the class, but I wasn't that bad at anything. A few things that do stick out from primary school for me though were: my reading age being significantly behind, never getting my pen license and then being shocked when I got to high school and being told you can use a pen, it literally doesn't matter, and doing well on a swim comp but then failing miserably when I went to zones - I even went to a teacher to ask if I could go because I came 2nd or 3rd, so she got me in, and then I realised why I wasn't asked - because I sucked (I think everyone was already outside of the pool by the time I finished my laps). Outside of primary school, I also took swimming lessons and I could never get to the top team because I wasn't fast enough and believe me, I tried - dad took me every Sunday morning to Pioneer Pool and I would try every single week to get to the top team, but the swimming instructor never let me in - I mean that's an example where I just gave up but at least I learned to swim - like I'm probably not gonna drown if I go for a swim somewhere, so there's that. But I think all of these things really pushed me to work my a** off as a teenager and then as an adult. So let's move on now to the high school years.
Ah, high school, I actually had a pretty good time here - there wasn't any of that scary bully stuff like you see in American high school movies or TV shows (although I'm pre sure that does go on in some places) and I made a lot of good friends who I still talk to, to this day, who I would do anything for and probably vice versa. I'm so grateful to have these people in my life, even if we are now in different countries. Anyway, there were some bullies - some I never stuck up to and I wish I did - I even remember writing a passive-aggressive Facebook note about one of them. That's still beside the point. Year 9 and year 10 were pretty good years for me, I wasn't in the top classes but I worked really hard. In year 11, I ended up in what was labelled "the dumb" maths class and one other friend were the only one who didn't bunk constantly so we got a lot of 1:1 tutoring. We weren't good at maths but the teacher (Mr Davies) was so helpful and wonderful that we got into one of the really hard maths exams and passed. I even got back into the "smart class" in year 12 - a little bit of pushback occurred though, but we got there. I do have to slightly cut year 11 off a bit - because the whole school got their grades bumped up because of the February earthquake - which was good for us, but the trauma from it did suck. My school ended up having to go to another school and that school went in the morning from 8am - 12pm and my school went from 1pm - 5pm (which kinda helped us as we were growing teenagers and seemed to do better in the evenings + FREE LUNCHES). Anyway, I had always loved writing and I was doing well in English this year and I got my first ever "excellence" - the NCEA system in NZ is a bit weird but excellence was the top (it was failed, achieved, merit, then excellence). I was ecstatic and I think it made my English teacher Mr Hewlett a bit biased towards me. Anyway, come my 2nd practice exam, I failed and I failed badly and I literally had no idea what I did wrong - I still don't and my teacher just went "what happened?" and I shrugged my shoulders. Anyway, on the actual exam, I got excellence but it was such a weird experience - my first proper failure.
Then comes year 12 and year 13. I decided to do chemistry and biology because I really thought I was gonna do forensics one day (I still might be able to) but I really didn't understand what was going on (and it's funny because you can't do any chem or bio at uni if you don't pass it at high school but when you get to the class, they tell you to forget everything you learned in high school). Anyway, I got by in year 12 alright, got an "achieved" on my photography folio which really p*ssed me off but I passed my exams. Year 13 wasn't the best year for me - this is when I started to get sick and my health problems kicked in - it's not an excuse at all, but it might have been one of the factors that led to my high school demise. The school also introduced this weird "2 hour period" policy where we only had 3 classes a day instead of 5 and it was not fun - everyone was drained and I think they stopped in the next year, but sitting on plastic chairs for 2 hours was not good for my back. Anyway, because of this I would just walk home from school and somehow my form teacher seemed to fix my attendance for me (shout out Mister). But this wasn't gonna be good, I failed all my exams except English. I was so disappointed. I also couldn't believe my photography folio failed - I worked so hard on that and my teacher coached me so much, but hey, the markers didn't like it and that's okay. Although when I approached another art teacher, they were like nah it's not worth getting remarked so I felt pretty bad about that.
I had also planned on doing biology and psychology at university so I could start my forensic career. What to do? I got the letter in the mail and was so upcalledset. I told Mum and then Dad called and safe to say Dad was very disappointed. People told me "you'll never go to university". Fortunately, the university sent me a letter to say "oh hey, looks like something out of your control happened in your UE year and we'd like you to take thisbridgingg course to get your UE instead of making up credits". Things were looking up, but I wasn't able to get in until the 2nd semester so it meant I had 6 months off. These were great, I had lots of me time and really honed in on my hobbies. But this didn't stop people from being like "you must work full time now", "do a trade" and others not talking to me for like 6 months at a time. Some other people also said "you'll never be able to do post-grad" and similar comments. Apparently, these comments were meant to motivate me. I guess they did in a way, but they still stuck with me - like why couldn't you just believe in me????? And this still happens. Is it because I'm a woman? Is it because you're threatened by me? Is it because I have this stupid soft-spoken voice so you correlate that to shyness or not being intelligent? Anyway, I did the bridging course at uni and I'm really glad I did - it was so helpful, and we learned so much about referencing. I took 4 courses: the required one everyone has to take, Pacific Studies, History, and Individuals in Society. And it made me change my double major to Sociology and Psychology (and we know how well that turned out - soo good). Anyway, all these other students in this bridging course had to do interviews to get in and see that they were staying on track and when I asked if I needed one, they were like oh nah don't worry, you'll glide through this - and that is something that really made me feel good. Sure, I got lots of help from friends proofreading things and learning how to research, but I did do well.
So the next year was my first official year at university so I was a dirty fresher - although I knew where everything was so people always asked me how to get places - idk if I looked older or just like I knew what I was doing but anyway. Some classes were good, others were way harder - and the two classes that I found hard were linguistics and anthropology. In first year, they often give you references to use for essays to help you out and I wrote what I thought was a really good essay for anthropology, but unfortunately, that essay got a D and I was so sad but I never took another anthropology class again after that - I don't think the lecturer liked me that much haha. Anyway, the good thing about failing stuff at university is you still get a % that goes to your overall grade so it's not an automatic fail. But this did bum me out a bit. Anyway, I managed to do okay in the class with the other assessments. And then there was the dreaded linguistics course - I took this course because I wanted to take forensic linguistics in my second year (but I ended up not having enough room for it). Anyway, the exams and tests were so hard that some of my friends dropped out of this course and there was one assignment that a lovely friend of mine helped me out with and do you know what it got, a bloody A???? And the comment was "this is great, I hope you continue to do linguistics" and I honestly cried. Yes, I got help, but I worked so damn hard to pass that class - and honestly, it's still the hardest class I've ever taken - more than statistics even.
With some amazing grades and some failures, I was starting to find myself and which direction I should go. I was doing really well in sociology - something clicked for me in this discipline and I always seemed to get better grades there than I did in psychology. I guess I had more creative freedom with the sociological imagination but ya know (and there was less maths).
I don't remember failing much else at university - oh my driving test but that's okay because I did get my license in a manual and that was bloody hard too because you're already so nervous and they want to fail you, not pass you. At least it was easy to transfer my license over to Australia. But yeah, I would say there were so many other "personal" failures that led me to where I am today - not knowing how to stick up for myself, getting in with the wrong types of men, losing friends, etc. I learned from these failures or mistakes and it's so important to embrace failure. Like let me use a video game analogy here - say you're playing a platformer game and you're stuck on a level trying to get to the next one. You don't give up after one try? You learn from what you did wrong the first time and so on. It's the same for life. What I'm trying to say here is failure is important, imperfection is beautiful, and mistakes are only human nature (or human error so to speak). So keep going. Don't let anyone tell you you can't do something - even your own imposter syndrome. Because I know, we are all our own worst critics.
Failure makes us grow.
Imperfection helps us learn about ourselves and what we like and what we don't like.
Failure and imperfection help us be vulnerable.
Remember, failure isn't the end of the road, more of a stepping stone to take us to the new path ahead - a path to growth and success (for example, if I didn't do that bridging course at uni, I might never have majored in sociology and that's what my masters was in). Each setback will always offer new opportunities or new adventures and then, we can surpass our previous limitations and reach new heights. Success isn't defined by the absence of obstacles, it's defined by the courage to persevere despite them. So just keep swimming as Dory says.
I know I haven't really talked about much about my time in Australia - this was all my NZ failures - but I don't like to think of Australia as a failure because it's one of the best things I ever did for myself - there have been some ups and downs and I have learned a lot of lessons but I probably wouldn't have been where I am now if I didn't go through all of that. I probably would have never started what I wanted to do if I didn't move here. I was always "too scared" and now it's time for me to show up, continue showing up, and keep going (and with a great support network too - from Luke and Benji to friends and family in Melbs). Who knows what's next?
I also know I should probably end this blog post there but I just want to say I'm a visual kinesthetic learning which means I learn by doing and also through images so if I don't know how to do something, I try and try again - if someone is just telling me something like how to play a card game, I have no idea what's going on and probably won't pick it up - like Luke tried to teach me crib and 500 and I still got no bloody idea what's going on. However, if I keep repeating something - like an example would be me learning to bake, when I was little, my fudge would never set, so I'd change what I was doing and now my fudge is always the "perfect consistency" - this isn't to say I don't get mad at myself when I don't get it right the first time, but I always keep trying. Sometimes it's okay to go have a breather - like today, I started putting together some raised garden beds to plant some herbs, but things kept going wrong so I kept taking breaks and coming back (Luke helped) and then we figured out what to do.
Anyway, I really hope this post has been inspirational - I always wanted to be one of those motivational speakers or writers but I didn't think I could because I didn't have anything wrong with me (and that's pretty sh*tty of me to think that) but now, here I am, pouring my heart and soul into my writing because if you ever hear any of my friends describe me in one word, it's always going to be "dedicated".
Thank you so much for reading today's blog post. I'll see you soon! Much love,
Ash xx
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