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Knights of Columbus hold canteen bingo for veterans

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Happy birthday Julianna Kelly!

<p dir="ltr">There are always plenty of things to be discouraged about.</p><p dir="ltr">I see copies of the school newspaper that my staff and I worked tirelessly on being run over in the street. I see the events I and my fellow club members organized being scarcely attended &#8212; and the mountain of snacks we purchased going uneaten. Sometimes the people I work with at these organizations snub me when I try to say hello to them on campus.</p><p dir="ltr">Sometimes I don&#8217;t get the test grade I thought I would. Sometimes I wake up late and don&#8217;t make it to Starbucks in time to miss the morning rush.</p><p dir="ltr">Those are the kinds of things that can really make you feel like a failure, especially when they start to add up.</p><p>Obviously, no one is perfect. But how do people who seem successful deal with small failures? No, really, I&#8217;m asking.</p><p dir="ltr">I would certainly like to think that the small failures don&#8217;t stop, and that it&#8217;s an issue of being able to bounce back; that sounds a lot better to me than &#8220;Nope, nothing ever goes wrong and everything is fine all the time. What&#8217;s the matter with you?&#8221;</p><p dir="ltr">You know that overused quote from Wayne Gretzky about how &#8220;You miss 100 percent of the shots you don&#8217;t take?&#8221; I like it. I hope to never see the day that it isn&#8217;t plastered on a million people&#8217;s lock screens.</p><p dir="ltr">I would guess that successful people probably fail a lot more than others because they take those shots &#8212; and inevitably miss a few.</p><p dir="ltr">Also, how can you know whether you&#8217;re doing things the right way unless something goes terribly wrong? If you can pinpoint it, that just better equips you in the future.</p><p dir="ltr">That&#8217;s great and all, but what is everyone else going to think when they see my lonesome self surrounded by wasted snacks in the Student Union Building?</p><p dir="ltr">I&#8217;ve found that spending too much time thinking about how other people react to my failures very seriously damages my ability to use those failures for a more successful end.</p><p dir="ltr">It&#8217;s pretty hard to stop doing that, but I think I found my new self-improvement journey.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Toni Ann Pennello</p><p>tpennello@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Toni Pennello is a Wilkes University senior who works in the Times Leader newsroom.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

College Life: Learning from failure key to self-improvement and growth