Embracing Failure: A Letter to My College Self
BY: DR. MARDI BILLMAN
Dear Mardi Billman, circa 2011,
For weeks, I have pondered what to write to you. What advice could I give you that you don’t already know? What advice could I give you that you would actually take seriously? Then I realized that this self-reflection—the kind that you never do—is already indicative of your life’s impending direction, the life I have lived and the wisdom I have gained. And there you are; you don’t even know who you are yet, let alone what you want.
“You never considered your life. You only considered your career, with little room for exception or failure.”
You are at the beginning of your senior year, and you know exactly what your life is going to look like after graduation because you are utterly single-minded in your motivations. You are going to graduate with a BA and honors in chemistry. You will then earn your PhD at a prestigious school like Berkeley or Stanford, and profess at a liberal arts college near the twin cities in Minnesota. There is nothing in your plan beyond that. Just graduate, PhD, teach.
You never considered your life. You only considered your career, with little room for exception or failure. And now here I am, writing to you from 10 years in the future. Did we do it? Did we “achieve our dreams?”
Sort of.
In this, the year 2011, you will successfully complete your research project by synthesizing that pesky ligand scaffold you’ve been working on for two years. You will write your senior thesis, defend it, and graduate with a BA and honors in chemistry. But that’s about as far as your life went according to plan.
You tried your best, but no one told you how competitive academia is after undergrad. You got rejected from every prestigious graduate program you applied to. Despite your good grades, and with all due respect, you did not take any of the application materials seriously. Your cover letters, resumes, and personal statements were all jokes. You treated them like bureaucratic hoops-to-jump-through, and it showed in your writing. Trust me, I’ve gone back to review your work. I wouldn’t have hired you either.
But you did get accepted to a couple of programs, and here’s the good news. Even though they were not your first choices at the time, you found a second-home in Fort Collins, Colorado. You moved half-way across the country for the sake of adventure and lived in the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. You got into hiking, biking, and web design for fun. You completed approximately five research projects during your five years in graduate school, though it’s hard to tell where one project ended and another began. After successfully defending your thesis defense the second time—because yes, you failed the first—you had earned your PhD in chemistry.
And where did that leave you? Degree-in-hand and with teaching experience under your belt, you submitted application after application to every liberal arts college that was hiring in Minnesota. When you received a wave of rejection letters, you begrudgingly widened your search. Fortunately, you were hired last minute as a visiting professor in Iowa. Then you were hired to help out at the nearby community college. Then you were hired in Michigan. You could never seem to find a position in Minnesota. Then, the most unexpected thing happened. Your visiting position in Michigan transitioned into a tenure-track position, and you would never return to Minnesota like you planned.
“There is so much more than what you expected. So much more than what you planned for. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last 10 years, it’s to not hold onto plans too tightly.”
So where does this leave you? Disheartened? I hope not, because your life is now, in 2021, so much deeper and more meaningful than you ever anticipated it would be. You are in a loving and committed relationship, the kind you looked for before but could never find. You still keep in touch with your best friends from college, and also have a larger number of friend-groups thanks to work and the internet. You keep time for your hobbies, which include painting, gardening, and regularly scheduled game nights. You’re hopefully going to be able to buy your first house this summer, God willing, and you look forward to raising children with your spouse someday.
There is life after undergrad. There is so much more than what you expected. So much more than what you had planned for. And if there is one thing I’ve learned in the last 10 years, it’s to not hold onto plans too tightly. Maintain motivation, but don’t fight against failure. Embrace it. The darkest moments of my adult life: rejection from graduate school, failing my thesis defense, leaving Minnesota; these events sowed the seeds for my current happiness. For the life I am currently living, and the only life I could ever want.
So, chin up. Look forward. It’s your life, so make it the one you’ve always wanted, even if in ways you’d never expect.
Yours truly,
Dr. Mardi Billman, circa 2021
