When I started here at Waterloo, I was nowhere near prepared for how much failure I’d have to deal with. Not getting interviews, getting terrible grades and flat out failing courses; it was hard.

I want to start off by saying: your failures do not define you. It’s all too easy to get a few bad grades or not get any interviews and to internalize it, thinking that you’re not good enough for your program or for life.

Let’s start with not getting the grades you want. It’s okay. It sucks to get a bad grade but it happens to most if not all of us at some points in our lives. I failed my first year in University and what followed was probably the worst year of my life. Never in my life had I struggled the way that I had during that first year. I did a lot of thinking, about whether I was in the right program and whether I was good enough. I decided to come back and years later, I’m still here and still trying. My grades suck. I’m at the bottom of my class, semester after semester. But I still get interviews and still get jobs and I’m still learning. My grades have been slowly improving and I’ve been getting better at dealing with the workload that comes with my program. It’s not an easy process but it’s a valuable one.

But grades aren’t the be all, end all. Some employers look at grades but many don’t. Many don’t care and many have gotten the same, if not worse grades than you and they understand. Over time you’ll meet a lot of people who didn’t do too well in school but went on to have amazing careers and lives. So maybe you’ll get a bad grade this term. Maybe you’ll even fail the course. So what? Figure out what went wrong, retake the course, and keep moving forward.

Interviews are the same story. I didn’t get any interviews in my first year. I felt embarrassed that all my friends were employed while I was desperately grasping at anything I could find. It felt humiliating. I hated constantly getting asked about my job search and whether I had found anything yet. The following semesters when I did manage to get interviews but didn’t get selected for most of them, I cried. I cried every time and I felt even more frustrated because this time it felt personal. It feels stupid to care so much about each interview but it’s okay. It’s okay to care and it’s okay to get upset. Take the time you need to be sad about it, and then keep going and keep trying. Some of us get a job after our first interview, some of us after our twelfth. It happens. Take it all as a learning experience and keep your head held high. Not getting interviews? Keep applying, it’ll teach you to apply to jobs faster and more efficiently. Not getting picked for interviews? Keep going to your interviews and get better and better at talking about yourself and why you’d be a good fit. It sounds easier said than done, but looking back, you’ll realize how important all of it was; the good and the bad.

I almost killed myself after I failed my first year. I couldn’t imagine going home and having to tell my parents. I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly do any better. Life felt pointless and I felt like a failure. But I’m glad I’m still here. I’m glad that I decided that it was worth it to stay in this program and to keep trying.

Some of you will realize that you hate what you’re doing and you’ll choose to leave. Good. It’s important to know when to quit and when to keep trying. For those of you who know this is what you want to do, don’t give up but please don’t think for even a second that a degree or a job is worth losing your life over. It’s not. There will be a lot of mistakes and failures you’ll experience but none of them mean that you’re not capable of being good at what you do. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that failure is inevitable. You just have to learn from it and keep trying.