4Vicky — beautiful, talented, very bright, voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in college — got a promising job with a large company after graduation. Then, after two years without promotions, she was fired. She suffered a complete nervous breakdown. "It was panic," she told me later. "Everything had always gone so well for me that I had no experience in coping with rejection. I felt I was a failure." Vicky's reaction is an extreme example of a common phenomenon.
Our society places so much emphasis on "making it" that we assume that any failure is bad. What we don't always recognize is that what looks like failure may, in the long run, prove beneficial. When Vicky was able to think coolly about why she was fired, for example, she realized that she was simply not suited for a job dealing with people all the time. In her new position as a copy editor, she works independently, is happy and once again "successful."
People are generally prone to what language expert S. I. Hayakawa calls "the two-valued orientation." We talk about eing both sides of a question as if every question had only two sides. We assume that everyone is either a success or a failure when, in fact, infinite degre
es of both are possible. As Hayakawa points out, there's a world of difference between "I have failed three times" and "I am a failure." Indeed, the words failure and success cannot be reasonably applied to a complex, living, changing human being. They can only describe the situation at a particular time and place.
立体五角星Obviously no one can be brilliant at everything. In fact, success in one area often precludes success in another. A famous politician once told me that his career had practically destroyed his marriage. "I have no time for my family," he explained. "I travel a lot. And even when I'm home, I hardly e my wife and kids. I've got power, money, prestige — but as a husband and father, I'm a flop."
Certain kinds of success can indeed be destructive. The danger of too early success is particularly acute. I recall from my childhood a girl who skill on ice skates marked her as "Olympic material." While the rest of us were playing, bicycling, reading and just loafing, this girl skated — every day after school and all weekend. Her picture often appeared in the papers, and the rest of us envied her glamorous life. Years later, however, she spoke bitterly of tho early triumphs. "I never prepared mylf for anything
医治的神but the ice," she said. "I peaked at 17 — and it's been downhill ever since."
Success that comes too easily is also damaging. The child who wins a prize for a carelessly - written essay, the adult who distinguishes himlf at a first job by lucky accident faces probable disappointment when real challenges ari.
Success is also bad when it's achieved at the cost of the total quality of an experience. Successful students sometimes become so obsd with grades that they never enjoy their school years. They never branch out into tempting new areas, becau they don't want to risk their grade - point average.
Why are so many people so afraid of failure? Simply becau no one tells us how to fail so that failure becomes a growing experience. We forget that failure is part of the human condition and that "every person has the right to fail."
Most parents work hard at either preventing failure or shielding their children from the knowledge that they have failed. One way is to lower standards. A mother describes her child's hastily made table as "perfect!" even though it's clumsy and unsteady. Another way is to shift blame. If John fails math, his teacher is unfair or stupid.
The trouble with failure - prevention devices is that they leave a child unequipped for life in the real world. The young need to learn that no one can be best at everything, no one can win all the time — and that it's possible to enjoy a game even when you don't win. A child who's not invited to a birthday party, who doesn't make the honor roll or the baball team feels terrible, of cour. But parents should not offer a quick consolation prize or say, "It doesn't matter," becau it does. The youngster should be allowed to experience disappointment — and then be helped to master it.
Failure is never pleasant. It hurts adults and children alike. But it can make a positive contribution to your life once you learn to u it. Step one is to ask, "Why did I fail?" Resist the natural impul to blame someone el. Ask yourlf what you did wrong, how you can improve. If someone el can help, don't be shy about inquiring.
When I was a teenager and failed to get a job I'd counted on, I telephoned the interviewer to ask why. "Becau you came ten minutes late," I was told. "We can't afford employees who waste other people's time." The explanation was reassuring (I hadn't been rejected as a person) and helpful, too. I don't think I've been late for anything since.
Success, which encourages repetition of old behavior, is not nearly as good a teacher as failure. You can learn from a disastrous party how to give a good one, from an ill-chon first hou what to look for in a cond. Even a failure that ems total can prompt fresh thinking, a change of direction.
A friend of mine, after 12 years of studying ballet, did not succeed in becoming a dancer. She was turned down by the ballet master, who said, "You will never be a dancer. You haven't the body for it." In such cas, the way to u failure is to take stock courageously, asking, "What have I left? What el can I do?" My friend put away her toe shoes and moved into dance therapy, a field where she's both competent and uful.
Though we may envy the assurance that comes with success, most of us are attracted by courage in defeat. There is what might be called the noble failure — the special heroism of aiming high, doing your best and then, when that proves not enough, moving bravely on. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "A man's success is made up of failures, becau he experiments and ventures every day, and the more falls he gets, moves I have heard that in hormanship — a man will never be a good rider until he is thrown; th噶尔丹
en he will not be haunted any longer by the terror that he shall tumble, and will ride whither he is bound."
胆固醇高的原因5While preparing to graduate from high school in 1987, Priscilla Vazquez waited anxiously for her letter from the University of Washington, hoping she would be the first person in her family to attend college. When the acceptance letter arrived, she was overjoyed.
There was just one problem: The University of Washington didn't have any grant money to give Priscilla. It offered her only a small loan and expected her family to come up with the rest. "My family was making enough money to get by, but not enough to pay that much for me to go to school," she said.
Priscilla called the financial-aid office for advice. They told her that prospective students eking more financial aid are eligible only if they have lived apart from their parents for a minimum of two years. During that time, their parents cannot have claimed them as a dependent on the family's tax forms. "Hearing this, I was totally stunned," Priscilla recalls. "I realized I was going to have to take some time off, work, become financially independe
社保费nt from my parents, and then reapply to school. Postponing my dream hurt, but it was the only possibility."
Within a month, Priscilla had found a job at a restaurant and moved into a cheap apartment in a poor neighborhood of Seattle. She also signed up for a job-training program in the city, to learn to be a cretary. It was a hard lifestyle to adjust to. "I got up at for a long commute to school, finished class at , started work at three, got off my shift at , and then I came back home and collapd."
Priscilla soon found that her restaurant job just didn't pay enough for her to make ends meet. "So I went to the landlord of my apartment building and asked if there was any cleaning work I could do. Since he felt sorry for me, he agreed to give me thirty hours a month."
小腿浮肿是怎么回事The job-training program was designed to last six months. Priscilla finished it in four. "They taught me various office skills and word-processing programs. I also learned to answer the phone in an office tting, and write proper business letters," she said. The program helped Priscilla find employment as a cretary with a small company. "It was m
y first decent job," she says. "I was nineteen years old, living on my own, and making $15,000 a year."
Priscilla reapplied to the University of Washington and was accepted. She qualified for financial aid becau she had been independent from her parents for more than two years. As of the fall of 1990, Priscilla was finally a college student — working full-time during the day as a cretary and going to school full-time at night.
Balancing work and school was difficult. "I was staying up late studying, and going to work early every morning. I was having a hard time concentrating in class, and a hard time on the job becau I was so tired," she says. But she ended up with two A's in her first mester anyway.
Priscilla decided to pursue an archaeology major, and in the summer of 1992, she got her first opportunity to really test out her interest in the subject. The archaeological field school of Washington State University was sponsoring a summer rearch project at a site alongside the Snake River in Washington. Priscilla threw herlf into the work, and the project supervisors were impresd. At the end of the summer, one of the professors
offered her a job. "He said,‘We just got a contract for a project in North Dakota. We want to hire you if you're willing to take a mester off from school.'" The offer was a diversion from Priscilla's pursuit of her BA. "But by then I no longer doubted that I would ultimately finish school, so I felt comfortable grabbing this opportunity," she says.
When the North Dakota project ended, Priscilla moved to California, where she could live rent-free with one of her brothers. "I ended up working three jobs, trying to make as much money as I could," she recalls. "I was tired of working full-time and being a full-time student. My goal was to save enough money to let me go back to school, study full-time and work only part-time." Priscilla's brother ran a hou-cleaning rvice, and he agreed to give her work. And she decided to enroll at a local community college where the tuition was much cheaper. 澳洲技术移民
Priscilla took some art class (she was an amateur photographer) and helped organize a gallery exhibit of students' artwork, including her own. In the spring of 1994, she graduated from Wenatchee Valley College with a two-year Associate of Arts degree. After graduating, Priscilla applied to the University of Washington once more. She was accepte
d and enrolled in the fall of 1994. Not having to work so many hours allowed her to make school her priority. "This was such a luxury, I was almost sorry to graduate!" Priscilla laughs. "But I was awarded my BA in January of 1996." 西山雨
As Priscilla looks back on her years of struggle to make her dream come true, she is cautiously encouraging toward others working their way through school. "To balance work and school, you have to know yourlf," she says. "You have to know what you can take and what you can't take. You need a lot of discipline, and you have to stay focud, even when you run into barriers and distractions and delays. But mostly you need determination. If you get put down once, just get back up there and keep fighting."
