My Fear of Failure

When I was working on my graduate degree, I once signed up for a course in a subject I knew was hard. I went to the first class and the professor handed out a test. He said, “If you fail this test you will fail this class.” I was nervous, I usually am calm during a test. As the room went quiet I looked through each question. I didn’t know how to solve any of them. I simply got up and walked out of the class. I had feared failure to the extreme. What happened after that was something I have regretted for a long time. You see, the class was a requirement for my Master’s degree in Computer Science. I told myself I would take another class and study up on the hard class in my spare time so that I could pass the first test that evaluated the students. I loved the new class but something had changed within me. I was no longer the confident student I once had been. I usually passed my classes with flying colors. But my self esteem took a blow. So I continued on with the new class with success. But one day it got hard. The assignment wasn’t working out the way it should have. That lack of self confidence thing kicked in again and I dropped out of the class. I claimed it was because my father-in-law died, I had toddler twins, I was coaching hockey, I had a full time job, and any other excuse I could make. But the real reason I dropped and never finished my degree was that I was scared. I never admitted to myself that I was scared until I wrote this post. I allowed myself to believe my excuses. I had successfully passed most of the courses I needed to get the degree and yet I let my fears cause me to drop out. I began to believe the degree was just a piece of paper and it would not affect my career in any way. I was already working in my field. Even though it was just a piece of paper I had allowed the fear to get to me and that hurt more than not getting the degree. Now fast forward several years to when I took a new job that was high risk with high reward. I had a nice stable job working with the government for many years. I would have been able to stay with that job until I retired with a great pension. However, I felt I was growing stale technically. I needed something different to shake things up. That’s when a friend offered me a job with a pre IPO (Initial Public Offering) company. The project was very high risk and we might fail. However, the pay was more than I could have possibly made within a lifetime of working for the government. I had never done that kind of work before and knew that it was going to be a steep learning curve. It was so difficult at first that I was almost let go. The one thing that saved me was my boss who had complete faith in me. He knew I had a high learning curve and that once I got my feet under me I would become a powerhouse. He was right. To me the accomplishment wasn’t the money, or the work, or the challenge. The accomplishment was overcoming my fears that I had while working on the graduate degree. No one knows just how scared I was to take the new job. I put on a brave face for my wife but down inside I was almost sick with fear. From now on I refuse to let the fear of failure hold me back. I have spent many hours working on this blog and I try to practice what I preach. I have big plans ahead of me now and I have only touched the tip of the iceberg.