My First ... Academic Failure!



I just learnt that I failed a test worth 7.5% of my overall grade in Italian. So much as I can remember, I’ve never out-and-out failed anything academically before. I’ve done more poorly than I expected and I’ve faced disappointment, but to legitimately fail, to attain a score below the pass boundary – to me this is a novel experience. 

My reaction has been to be shaken. My confidence is shaken: confidence in my own ability and, more perniciously, confidence in whether I should be doing Italian at all. Should I give up? Should I relinquish the possibility for an opportunity to live abroad for a year because clearly I’m not fit to study the subject? Should I stick to Philosophy – something I am at least decent at? 

There are many metaphors and illustrations to use that describe how I feel right now. I feel like a junior sporting champion who, despite coming first in all local competitions with ease and flourish, finds himself in last place when he competes in the nationals. I feel like an old aristocrat who, through social change, has been demoted to the middle classes. What do these pictures have in common? The realisation that I am not special, that I too am subject to certain maxims and imperatives of life. Last year I came to this realisation quite quickly with philosophy: I began to hang around with especially talented people in the field of philosophy, students who I’m certain will be future academics, and I realised I don’t have the option to coast anymore if I wish to do well. I was shown what it takes and I upped my game. However, no such parallel was found in Italian.  In fact, I did coast through Italian 1 and I passed without much effort. My grade wasn’t perfect or even ideal, but I got a low 2.1 and that is all that mattered. Now, in Italian 2, the work is suddenly so much more difficult, but my mind still believes (with years of reinforcement) that I can still coast and survive. But now I’ve been shown the opposite.  My test score was 3 marks below passing. “That’s not that low,” you might interject, but you must realise it’s still a fail and I’m not used to this. 

The damage isn’t irreversible, though. 7.5% of my overall grade is just a small portion, and if I can consistently get in the 60-70 range for the rest of my assessments, I might be able to salvage a respectable final mark. It shows me, however, that I need to work hard in Italian to achieve. The fact that (if I succeed) I have to live there next year should have spurned me on from the beginning, but no, it took failure. This failure is a blessing in disguise. It reminds me that half my degree is Italian and so I need to work just as hard on it as I do with Philosophy. At present, the balance is far more in favour of Philosophy. This doesn’t make any sense. 

Things will change.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SoE update

According to the Google Reader counter, more than 5 people read this blog, which is impressive, considering a lot of what I do is literally just try to figure out how I should structure my days. Not very sexy or rock and roll. This is what this post is about. So the first week of the schedule of equilibrium went okay and the second week worse. I'm trying to judge where I'm going wrong. I added 2 hours of Miscellaneous in order to cover for shower time and other little things that I felt need not necessarily count as free time, or any of the other categories. That wasn't such a bad idea. I think, however, trying to keep consistent every day of the week how much time I allocate to each category is what makes things difficult, considering that each day asks of me different things. But at the same time I don't want the amount of time I spend on a particular thing to be arbitrary either, so I want there to be some consistency. Mondays are my busiest days work-wise, so ...
Read more

A Letter To A Friend (On Hedonism)

I was thinking about you the other hour and how by degrees of consideration I have begun to understand the pressure you once and possibly still do feel to achieve greatly, and how you consequently personally desire to do greatly, regardless perhaps of the impracticalities of such desires. I considered my own situation, as one must do in order to understand another, with the express desire to pinpoint the source of this endless undercurrent of guilt that courses through me in the knowledge that I am not doing all that I should be. I thought of Sartre who says that feelings such as guilt, anxiety, and apprehension presuppose the Other, that is: other people, and how if the consideration of the Other was absent, so too would anxiety, guilt, or apprehension. To me, at least compared to you, it always seemed to me that I do my A levels and I study what I study for myself, and that my grades reflect myself and that the sphere encompasses me and me only. But that was naturally, clearly, and d...
Read more

What Am I Interested In? [The Eternal Question]

I guess what I want from Philosophy is the ability to stir the passions of people -- an interesting way, a way that appeals to myself too, to look at the world and understand it. I don't mean I have to move people; I'm not so much about moving people. That's politics. I just want to see the world in a more clear, helpful way, without frill and pomp, but still with beauty and majesty, and I guess that's what I want to get out of philosophy and eventually get into my writing. I want to touch people's passions in such a way that they see differently, but this has nothing to do with moving people, or making them do anything. It's an internal thing. I'm trying to figure out the most moving regions of philosophy. Philosophy is very wide, and much of it is interesting, but there comes a point when you have to figure out what it is you're studying it for, and focus more on that area, otherwise you will only be weak in many areas, as opposed to strong or pro...
Read more