Does passing or failing matters? Just the mere articulation of these two nouns immediately flashes the word “EXAM” in an average mind (not brain, mind you!). Did yours? Never mind. Forget it. But exam is not the only passing or failing issue. Any form of personal evaluation by others, say job interviews and car driving test are also those events which results in pass or fail. So now, what is it all about passing or failing? Keep reading, don’t fail to do that.
In academic departments, people still choose to use failure as the key quality indicator in statistics. The mathematical connotation is that passing rate is too branded to be used. Colleges rank themselves according to who failed out more students as a measure of superiority. Passing rates are also considered but only on occasions when failure rates are beyond imaginable threshold. The trepidation of failing is instilled due to fear of exclusion. But is apprehension the worst pit one can expect out of failure? People want to be in the mainstream and remain relevant to their surroundings. Personally, failure seldom helps this revered ambition. There are hundreds of journals and even PhD dissertations that study the attributions for failure and success of a person. Why people fail to pass?
And now, that was a very delicate question which requires personalized answer. A thorough self-examination may provide the answer, but to many people self-analysis is difficult and probably religious. Self-analysis is a painful exercise because we think we are more than 100% right and others always wrong. Blame-Caster, as they called it. As a passing remark, we have never collected data about ourselves to facilitate the analysis. The bottom line is one should be able to accept failure as part of the game. The result of the game itself does not end the game. When you don’t like the result, go for a replay. If that doesn’t work, change the sport. Don’t bother about what the spectators have to say. Referees have a job to do. So don’t blame them too. Everyone fails at some point in time in their lives. Accept failure and dare to fail. If you fail, just sit back and relax. Then play it harder but safer the next time. After all, as they say, success is merely the absence of failure.
Valliyappan David Natarajan© 2007
