Failure to Launch

Failure is a dish best not served at all in a lot of our opinions. It’s a bitter pill to swallow and will have you questioning your life decisions.

Failure is also a good motivation for some of us. The fear of it drives us to push harder, ride faster and stay awake longer than others. Whether it’s exams, relationships, career, business, some of us thrive on our fear of failure. But what happens when that fear catches up to us.

It’s like being fed your worst nightmares. It’s like someone making a nursery rhyme out of all your insecurities.

“See I told you so. You suck at maths. *insert evil maniacal laughter*”. And replay a thousand times.

On June 2017, I wrote what I thought would be my last ACCA qualification exams. Advanced financial management (aka P4). Passing this final qualification exams would make me a chartered and certified accountant. And also fit nicely into my grand long-term plan of world domination (I’m kidding! )

Yikes. 

I failed the first time. No biggie, I told myself. I’d struggled with studying for it anyway. And anyone who knows me knows I’m an optimist. I was sure that given another opportunity I’d ace it. I knew my weakness. I was great at studying the textbook but sucked at practicing questions. I lost interest in questions that were too long. And AFM had longgggg questions my goodness! I just needed to score a 50 to pass. 

So I prepared to retake the exams in December. I could still meet my 3 year deadline of finishing the blasted ACCA qualification exams.

I retook them in December and failed again. 49 this time. I could hear my mother’s voice in my ear telling me to not be overly confident in my own skills but lean more on God for wisdom and understanding. I couldn’t think past the din in my ears telling me that I’d missed my personal deadline. 2017 had ended and I still wasn’t an ACCA qualified accountant. 

I had one more try per the firm I worked with. At this time I wasn’t even getting educational support anymore. I had outdated textbooks and workstress. I was prepared to retake it in March but was advised against it. June, I thought to myself. That’ll be my time. Sadly, I booked a holiday onthe day I was supposed to take the exam, so no exams for me.

I came back from my holiday prepared to absolutely murder the exam and leave failure in my past. I was obsessed with success. I thought if I studied harder, absolutely killed myself, there was no way I wouldn’t pass. 

Wrong! I failed again. This time I scored 45. Again?! It felt like I was sinking even deeper into failure. Despair became my best friend. I cried myself to sleep for the first days after the results were published.

I could hear those failure nursery rhymes in my head. Maybe I’m not as smart as I’ve always thought, I told myself. Maybe there’s a conspiracy going on and everyone in my life who’s ever told me I’m smart was lying. Maybe I had always been a “big fish in a small pond” and now I couldn’t swim in the ocean. 

These were some of the worse days of my life. Someone reading this would probably be befuddled by how much failure affected me. But when most of your identity is based on what you ‘can do’, your ‘performance/intellect’, failure cripples you. 

I had gotten so used to ‘winning’ that I never even doubted my ability to succeed. That may seem harmless but read that again. My winning. My ability to succeed.

Those victories, my past successes, they were never mine. And that was a lesson I was learning the hard way.

After crying my eyes out some more, I dusted myself up and prepared for a December 2018 retake. This would be my fourth attempt now. Studying for this particular exam was even harder than the first three times. By now, I knew the textbook and revision kit like old friends. I was still using my outdated textbook. I just focused on time management. That was something different, a new approach, I told myself.

Anyway, in the middle of relocating to a new country, changing jobs, etc, I retook the exams. 

Scored another brilliant 45. What the heck was going on?

I was resigned. I accepted defeat. This was worse than any heartbreak I’d ever felt. This time not only was the all-familiar nursery rhyme of all my insecurities playing in my head but a new chime had joined in. It felt like “Curse God and die”. 

It felt like a huge question mark on my faith. Self-doubt was being coupled with God-doubt.

I fought the thoughts every day. They felt blasphemous. With a heavy, resigned heart I registered for my fifth attempt at my last ACCA exam. It was even more expensive for some reason (probably my punishment for being a frequent retaker added to the fact that I now had to travel to a new city to write the exam). 

I was in the middle of busy season at a new job studying for this exam that I wasn’t even sure I would pass. I didn’t study. I tried to but I was toodisheartened. I was tired from closing late at work and winter was mistreating me (another story for another day). 

I knew my balancing work and fake-studying for this exam would affect my performance (it actually did. It appeared in all my appraisals as a “she’s sound technically but she seemed distracted”). But I tried not to let it. The lesson I learnt from this is, you can’t do it all. You can’t be superwoman!

At work, I was reviewing other junior staff’s work and things were slipping through my supposedly ‘critical’ eye. Despite this, I lackadaisically made my way through the study period. I remember many conversations with my friends where I sounded very unenthusiastic about the exams. 

You see, I’d had a conversation with God just before the exam. It went something like “God, I can’t do this. I really can’t. I’ve tried to do this in the past under the pretense of I trust you and I’m letting go. But I never did. Now I’m really letting go. I’m clearly powerless as my track record has proven. So just do your thing God. Live up to your name”. Something like that, maybe not word for word. But you get the gist. 

Anyway, fast forward to my exam, I was literally sick with fear on that day. There was an outright battle going on in my head. I could see the sickly, cowardly fear dragon trying to rear its head and my fiery faith dragon kept spitting fire at it forcing its head down. 

As soon as the examiner said the time was up. I felt this relief wash over me. I’d barely finished the exam. Same issue that had always affected me everytime I’d failed it in the past...time management. But I couldn’t help feeling like this was a supernatural exam. So it wasn’t about what I’d written. The fight wasn’t mine. I prayed over my exam paper and returned to my city.

The next month was absolute joy for me. I carried on like I had no results to fret over. I pushed the exam so far into the recesses of my mind that I didn’t even know when my results were published. 

I was watching Games of Thrones when I saw the notification. I remember thinking that I had to finish the episode so as not to spoil my mood. Fear dragon was back but faith dragon was also nearby, ready to force fear into submission. 

After the GOT episode, I’m a ‘just-yank-the-bandaid-off’ kinda girl, so I just swiped the email open. 

Pass!! Pass!!!

My first reaction was a sudden outburst of tears.I couldn’t stop. I cried for close to two hours. God won! God won!

My goodness! He did it! 

1 year and 3 months later. 5 attempts later. He did it and succeeded in teaching me several lessons along the way. 

I don’t think I feel any more or any less intelligentnow that I’ve passed this exam. For me, this was a hurdle that seemed insurmountable.

My identity, how I see myself, has shifted. I don’t judge myself by my successes or my failures. I know that I’m more than that smart girl, or that chartered accountant (although that also feels pretty darn good to say). The most important viewpoint for me is that I am now that girl that trusted God absolutely and whose faith dragon won ultimately. 

[No tears were shed in the writing of this article.]