During my college days, I took classes on Visual Basic and Java. Based on my schedule, I started with Visual Basic and failed to get a good grade. I received a C (70/100 points) for my Visual Basic course. For an aspired software engineer, getting a low grade on computer science courses was not acceptable.
The main reason why I failed with Visual Basic was because I did not spend enough time to study and complete the lab exercises. I was working full-time with my parents on their furniture store. Between working at the furniture store and going to school full-time, I did not have much time left to study.
I learned my lesson from this failure. I knew I had to get better grades on Java. Sprint semester was coming to an end and I started my research on the Java course. I completed my research and bought the Java book and enrolled in that class. I was determined to get a better grade.
During that summer, I installed Java on my windows machine and at the furniture store. The installation process was very easy and I started reading chapter 1 and taking notes. After I finished chapter 1, I completed the exercises using notepad and the ms-dos console. Using notepad as my text editor allowed me to remembered the syntax. By this time, I was so anxious to start the Java course. I was confident that I will get a better grade. Three months of learning the Java language, prepared me to get a better grade.
Another reason why I think I completed the Java course with a better grade was that my only focus was learning and studying one subject. I was focus on one thing only. I was not able to focus during Spring because of the many classes I was enrolled into and my full-time job.
In conclusion, my failure with Visual Basic allowed me to think about my career as a software developer. I knew that recruiters will look at my computer science courses to see my dedication. A low score on those classes will indicate poor performance but a high score will indicate dedication and effort.
I hope you can reflect on your failures not to stay in that state but to learn from it.