Hi there. In this education post, I talk about doing well to succeed or to avoid failure. Although this post is mostly towards students young and slightly older the contents in this post does apply to workplaces, sports and in life.
We all have goals. Goals can be for school, for sports, for video games, or for finance and money goals. According to this article from Positive Psychology, goals help with aligning focus.
Students in the lower grade have to do well in school in order to move on to the next grade for learning more. The more knowledge and skill one has, the more the student can do. There is overlearning where you can end up with too much learning and not enough doing. That is a different topic.
Those who want to obtain professions in fields like medicine, law, dentistry, engineering, finance have to do well in school in order to start careers in those fields. Doing well in school is not just about grades alone. For some school programs, you need to be more well rounded and show that you have done volunteer work and even relevant paid work. Good personalities along with grades help too.
There is also doing well in a skill, profession or craft. Being a top chef, a top architect, a top magician, a top athlete, or an elite dancer is difficult. There is a lot of competition involved. Success can come from one or a combination of hard work, charisma, personality and marketing.
Another way to look at things is to do well to avoid failure. It can be even to do well enough to avoid failure. A failed course in school means that a course has to be retaken as there is not enough that a student knows the material well enough to move on to the next course or for a pass.
Sometimes there are courses that a student may not like or they may even hate the course. The courses could be required so it out of the students control. Students would have to find the willpower, grit and determination to push through in order to pass a school course or do well.
As an example, I have heard back in the day that those who want to get into pharmacy school need a few courses in calculus from mathematics. Many students do not like math but if someone wants to get into pharmacy school, mathematics/calculus is needed.
Many university/college programs in the sciences, business and sometimes art do require an introductory course in statistics. A large handful of people take intro statistics as a part of the program. Failure in a required course such as statistics means the student would not graduate their program.
From the student perspective, dealing with failure from a test, exam or course is horrible. It does not feel good. You do question yourself and your abilities after failures. From the educator perspective, pass and fails are needed to filter out those who do not demonstrate a good enough level. As one example, it would not be good to give a pass to aspiring engineers if their math is really poor. Precision is crucial when it comes to building infrastructure.
Bouncing back from failure is possible. Try things such as:
Thank you for reading.
