The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
wrong ID
Any type of review is accepted, try to tear it down and please help me in making it under 650 words.
I was walking out of a company with a smile on my face, happiness in my heart and a voice inside my head saying "this is what you are and you finally did it". Before I explain you why I was so happy and satisfied let me start with an incident happened 2 months back.
From 1 year I was working on my independent project to build a network system which cannot be hacked, I went to different companies to know the major issues they are facing with information security, and one day I came up with an idea to build a centralized network which acts like a brain which has no way to hack into. So I went to a company to meet the systems architect to confirm if the idea could work, he was surprised with the idea and said it will work if I can design the absolute network I explained. He gave me some of his research records and said if they could help, I returned home and started reading his work and after reading some pages I thought it was useless to me so I kept it aside.
After a few days I started searching for top universities in the world with best undergraduate research opportunities and I found out most of them were situated in America. I decided to apply to some of the universities, so I read the requirements and found that SAT score is a major part of the application. My father encouraged me to take SAT even though we found it hard to pay. I decided to take SAT in October so that I could apply early, I started working hard for SAT as there is only one month left. It's October 13 and I was confident that I could perform well, I reached the exam center and at checkpoint I was asked to show my ID, I showed them my government issued ID, but he said they would only accept passport as valuable ID in India, which I didn't have. I was not allowed even after requesting for long time and I didn't know what to do, I was in shock because I was never expected a hit like that, and it was replaying over and over in my head that I cannot afford for another registration and all my dreams of attending those universities were fading away.
I was inconsolably angry with myself. I spent the entire car ride home tuning out my mother's words of consolation and my father blaming me for my over-confidence and recklessness. For the next few days I was thinking about any last chances for making it right and I was angry on my father for blaming me because I thought it was an honest mistake. One day my father came to me saying about the option of changing test date even after the exam at an affordable cost, and I shed tears with happiness and thanked my dad for helping. Later my father said it would take more than 2 months to get passport, so the only option left for me to take SAT in January which I thought would be late for submission. I send emails to universities requesting to accept January scores and they replied positively, everything was back to normal and I am ready to apply to the universities.
But one day I was recalling all those nightmares and I started asking myself why I have gone through all these, so I opened the College Board website to read all the terms and conditions and I found out the line mentioning about specific countries was exactly below the line mentioning "any government issued ID will be accepted", and I was thinking why I didn't read that line, then I remembered the negatives my father used to point out in me, which I didn't care until I went through a break song. Yes, I had a habit of not reading completely and imagining what they would write next will be useless, I thought myself as genius while doing those but now see that behavior as nothing but immaturity. My father was right I was a lot over-confident in things I used to do, but I think that failure is not actually a failure, it gave me a second chance to change my attitude. I started seeing myself nothing but a common student like others, so I started reading the research work gave to me by the engineer and after working on it for a month I found a brilliant formula to build my project. I visited his company to thank him personally for giving his personal work for my project and he said he was very happy to see a passionate student like me, and this is what made me happy and satisfied today and maybe I needed to stopped entering the exam hall to see the other side.
THANK YOU@barry
Hi Barry, I think your "failure" that you wrote about isn't really a failure, more of an honest accident. A failure would be more like if you wrote the SAT and got a unsatisfactory mark, rather than accidentally misreading the rules and not even getting to write the test in the first place. That kind of an accident doesn't show the AOs the same kind of frustration on your part as a true failure. Also, one little suggestion, I believe people usually say "the SAT" and not just "SAT". For example: " I decided to take the SAT in October so that I could apply early, I started working hard for the SAT as there is only one month left.
@digestadonut
Thank you for your suggestions, but i took it as a failure because not reading completely is not actually a honest mistake for me because as I have mentioned that was a habit of me to be careless by leaving the rest to my imagination, and that habit stopped me from writing the exam, so that's why I took it as a failure.
Anyways thank you for your suggestion, I don't have much time for another topic and I will try to change it if possible.
From 1 year I was working on [...] was useless to me so I kept it aside.
The connection of this sentence to the main point of your essay is not very clear. I felt that that going from this to the next paragraph was too much of a jump and didn't flow coherently.
There are also a lot of grammar mistakes throughout the essay, I would go back and reread a few times.
I would also focus a bit less on what your father said and how he made you feel, that may help you get the word count down as well.
Good luck!
@arg
Thank you for your help, it was really a useful suggestion and I will work on it.
And I will re-read to find the grammar mistakes, I actually didn't have time so I posted my first draft and I need to edit it.
Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,864 
4788 Barry, if you just focus the essay on your failure to comply with the I.D. requirements for a SAT taker, then the essay will have the "failure" theme in it. It will highlight the failure caused by your carelessness. However, you will have to adjust your ending to show that you were able to successfully take the SAT the next time around in order to create the "lesson learned from failure". You do not need to tell the reviewer the story about the company that led up to the SAT test. He is not interested to that and it is irrelevant to your failure to present the correct ID at the testing center. So if you just omit the story about the company and just say that you were scheduled to take the SAT's when you were prevented from doing so on a technicality, then the essay will have a reduced word count but a more focused response to the prompt.
@Holt
Thank you very much for your review and I will take of the company story from the essay.
@Holt @arg
Happy new year and I wish you have a great year.
