A Mistake I Learned From

Everybody makes mistakes, they are a part of being human. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, both big and small, and I definitely have regrets. But the point of making mistakes is that you learn and grow from them. A big mistake that I made and learned from happened during junior year, after we had been sent home because of covid. We were given a week of vacation, which got extended into two. And then because of the timing, the week after that was April vacation, so we basically got three weeks of school off. During this time, it was decided that we would spend the rest of the year online because of the pandemic. The extended vacation combined with online school absolutely killed any motivation I had to do schoolwork, and so when online school began, I did what I do best and procrastinated.

I’ve always been a big procrastinator. I’d even say that it’s one of my biggest talents. I put off all my work, and turn it in at the very last minute. But this time was different. I wasn’t just procrastinating on my work, I wasn’t doing it at all. For the entire month of April, I didn’t show up to any of my online classes, and I think I did only one or two of the dozens of assignments given to me. Obviously, I fell really behind. So when the end of the year started approaching fast, I was extremely stressed out, more than I ever had been before. I stayed holed up in my room for days cranking out as much work as I could. I had to catch up on a month of missing work, plus keep up with the work that continued to be assigned. I remember one night, I couldn’t sleep because of all the anxiety about my work I was feeling. I ended up writing an entire essay at four in the morning while crying due to stress. That’s how I realized that I had made a big mistake.

The end of my junior year was the most stressed that I have ever been in my life. I never want to be that stressed out again. I realized the mistake I made by not doing any schoolwork for a month, and I had to deal with the consequences of it. But with mistakes comes an experience to learn from. My senior year I decided to stay on top of my work as best as I can. Especially with English, which was my biggest cause of stress junior year, I try to do the assignments when they are given to me. Because of my experience, I learned that it’s so much better to do the work when it’s assigned instead of waiting until the last minute, and this year, I’m definitely better at getting my work done.

I ended up passing all my classes, and getting all my work turned in on time junior year, but it took a lot of hard work, more than necessary. If I had just stayed caught up on my work in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to deal with the amount of stress I did. I learned from my mistake, and I grew from it, although, I do still at times procrastinate a lot.

“Studying for STAT231 in the middle of the night” by tony.targonski is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0