This past semester has been surprisingly difficult. I thought a semester of 14 credits would be a breeze. At least compared to the average 16 credits. I didn’t take into account the kind of commitment and focus two sciences and a math would call for. This lack of commitment and focus has lead to a poor performance academically. I just recently finished a test that did not help the situation. I spoke to a friend, let’s call him Poncho, who took the same test and feels the same way about his own and told him, “Well, we learned our lesson.” Poncho responded, “Have we? How many times have we said that?” He brings up a good point. This wasn’t the first failure in which I told myself I learned my lesson. I responded, “I guess it took this many failures to actually learn it.” Poncho delivered the final punch, “it takes 0 failures to learn the lesson.”
It’s popular to think that it’s important to live life without regrets. I’ve heard people say they don’t regret anything because the mistakes they made has brought them where they are now and has made them wiser. I could not agree more that mistakes carry the potential to make someone wiser. And, yes it is very important to learn from those mistakes. But are they ever necessary? I doubt it. I do not regret what I’ve learned. But I definitely regret what it took and what it will take for me to learn. Mistakes and failures are like antibiotic resistant bacteria. A natural, but very unnecessary part of life.