What took me so long to find this out? I ought to know it by now! Why it took me all these years to understand this. There is no success but failures. Life is nothing without failures.
I was supposed to get a table constructed for a pending to be written manuscript a year and a half ago. It will not be a fancy table with complex numerical figure. It was supposed to be the first thing done and checked before I pursued that study further. Yet being a great procrastinator, I’ve put off till this last minute when the study has come close to an end. It’s no big deal; I just need to spend 30 minutes in front of the computer and clicking some buttons to analyze the experiment done during summer 2004. What happened? I ended up going back and forth of the analysis for almost 2 days! Not a single line or word was constructed! At first I thought I’ve had the analysis done after fiddling around the program for few hours. I went away happily with the “raw” (turned out to be wrong data) data. I referred to a previous data and found out that I’ve left out a crucial part in the analysis that made the “raw” data in hand WRONG. So I went back to the program trying to redo and fix those left outs. It was another few hours spent excluding another wrong step done during the process. Till this entry, I’m still not quite sure whether I have it analyzed correctly.
When I first stepped into research field, I was hit badly with failures in experiments. I was greatly disappointed with myself. I complained. I cried. My first step of my project for my final year (entire duration for that research project was about 10 months), it took me 3 good months to get it worked. Needless to say there were many steps before reaching the final stage so that I have some results to writing up the thesis. I didn’t get anywhere close to Step 3 unfortunately. But that was really ok; everyone in that field understands that. While complaining and venting what a failure I was, someone sarcastically said, “Hey, research just basically means, re-search. That is to search what will NOT working again and again.” This guy who told me this must be as nutty as fruitcake? I thought so.
Looking around of what I’ve been doing, other than RESEARCH at work, I’ve been RESEARCHING a lot in other things in life too. I hardly get things work on the first few times. There were a few times I did make it work on the first occasion. That was really like hitting the jackpot! Just when I thought luck was on my side, the magic didn’t work for the second and subsequent time.
One thing I really love about my work now, I mean medical science research is I’ve been constantly hit by failures and by now I’m so darn used to it. The moment I get a new stuff work on the first trial, I’d become very sceptical and start to wait for the failure that is bound expected next time. And most of the time I was correct. How lucky can you be every time? I mean come on, let’s be realistic a bit; you can’t be an expert in something new. How would you get it work perfectly well without more practices? The more practice you get, the higher chance you’ll screw things up, and therefore we get more failures.
The constant failures from work has really trained me well and prepared me to facing more failures in life. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in many matters thus far. The way you deal with certain things. How you should perceive a problem? How to get along with someone? How can you be a better *insert your role* to others? Being a freshman and inexperienced explain this all. As you get more experience (note that experience actually means more failures encountered), you’ll gradually find your way. I personally find myself learn much better each time after a failure. The amazing bit is I can also see other sides of myself during each encounter.
But let’s not be disheartened by failures. Success is really nothing if there is no failure. The great inventor and believer of failure, Thomas Alva Edison always stressed, “Every failure a success.”.
I can foresee I’ll make more mistakes in future. But hey, as what Mr. Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work…” So who cares about success? Life is nothing without failures!
