Celebrating Failure

I think that this is one of the most interesting assignments in this course.  I am a very big believer in failure being important for growth.  That being said I am also extremely hard on myself and if something is not right then I do consider that a failure.  I see failure in things that I do every day, true there are different levels and sometimes I let it go a little easier than others, but to me it is still a failure.  I try and take failure as a learning opportunity and always try to not make the same mistake twice.  That is not to say that I do not get frustrated or upset with myself. I tend to beat myself up pretty good on most mistakes that I make.  This class has not really changed how I feel about failure at all.  I feel that the way I handle is the appropriate way to do so and will continue to move forward with my process.  Being that I do take failure so seriously, one failure is sticking with me and it is fairly recent.  I spent a couple weeks doing research and studying for this and watched all of my time and effort get undone in a matter of just a couple days.  This was an event that lasted a while and after the first day it wasn’t so bad but then day 2 came and the next few weeks were downhill from there.  It was March 18^th and everything was going okay but something didn’t feel right and then it hit my first major blow and a big step toward failure, Middle Tennessee had beaten Michigan State and just like that on day 2 I had lost a final four team and my runner up in the national title game.  It would only spiral out of control from there.  On the very next day Indiana beat Kentucky and knocked out my 2^nd final four team and destroy that half of my bracket.  Still hanging on by a thread at this point, all hope was crushed 7 days later on March 26^th when Villanova knocked out Kansas, who was not only my 3^rd final four team, but also who I picked to win the title.  In the end, I was left with only Oklahoma to go to the final four and they did, however I was nothing more than a spectator at this point with nothing to hope for.  By the time the dust settled I finished 9^th and my small pool of ten people the only person I did better than was my 11 year old daughter, who would of beaten me too if Syracuse knocked off North Carolina in the final four.  Yeah it was that bad.  My learning experience is that sometimes you can’t predict how the tournament is going to go and there is a reason they call it March Madness.