Being Defined By Past Failures

"I was a bit of a screw-up freshman year," he said when I asked him to tell me his story. "That was ten years ago, and I just don't feel like I have a plan."

With sad eyes, drooped shoulders, and a quiet voice, it was clear that he still saw himself as a screw-up. This was despite supporting himself with a job that he was committed to, excelled at, and often enjoyed. But there was a story about him that he believed and that family and friends did not fight: without a college degree, he would always be a screw-up.

Poor grades had become routine and a weight that he felt drag on him semester after semester. At some point each term, despair would hit and a sense of inevitable failure would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

It was a familiar script that had started to feel to his like destiny.

"Look, you're not a screw-up," I said. "You know how to work hard, to show up, to follow through, to wade through shit when it's required. You are not a screw-up".

Tears welled in his eyes, and frankly, in mine, too. 

We'd met fifteen minutes earlier but it was already clear that the weight of past failures was weighing heavily, not just on his educational journey, but as a life-defining characteristic.

That's a weight I'm familiar with. 

Even though I now have a PhD, school was not always easy or natural for me. In fact, in my office sit my PhD and MA diplomas, right next to a framed letter of rejection.

It's from the University of Minnesota admissions department and informs me that I would not be admitted as a transfer undergrad student. In 2004, after four years of unconventional decisions and mediocre to poor grades, I had decided to really apply myself to the goal of a degree. The rejection felt like a period on my story.

Although it's now a kind of symbol of my resilience, at the time that I framed it, I was framing my sense of self: a reject and a failure. I was laughing at myself because I was embarrassed.

I was embarrassed that I had ignored the advice and counsel of so many people who warned me I was throwing away my life by not going straight to college. I was embarrassed that I couldn't apply myself the way earlier teachers had implored. And it didn't matter any more that these messages were still false.

It was painful, so I framed it - trying to have some control over the moment even as I felt I had no control over my life and future.

That I had no college degree in a world that puts so much value on credentials was a source of deep insecurity for the next six or seven years. I made self-deprecating jokes about it, tried to look like I didn't care, and worked hard to earn the respect that I felt I didn't have because I lacked the degree.

I felt that one of my central identities was as a failure. And I was sure that my friends, parents, in-laws, and other family members saw me that way, too.

My confidence was so beaten that I accepted other people's definition of success and failure. Whether or not my lack of degree really was a failure isn't the point. The point is I felt it deeply.

I think that's why I teared up when I told that guy that he wasn't a screw-up. I know what it means to desperately want to hear that. To hear that I am not defined by a past failure. To know that my story is not already written by those failures. To have someone see my capacity to work hard and commit to a task. To have someone challenge my bondage to old scripts.

I am reminded again of the important role we can play in each other's lives by simply holding open possibility. To insist on a way forward and then have the longstanding patience to be present to a shared search for that way.

We are not defined by our past failures, and we need to remind each other of that truth. I am grateful that this young man reminded me.