This I Have Learned

 Looking back on my K-12 journey, the most important thing I’ve learned, and the most important advice that I would take away from it to give to other students, is to not look back. To be specific, I learned that looking back on the little details and mishaps throughout my career ended up being more detrimental than I thought it would be, contrary to the advice most people gave me. “Practice makes perfect,” “mistakes breed success,” etc. These people weren’t wrong, but the thing is, these sayings are really vague when it comes to the intensity of scrutinizing mistakes, and I learned that firsthand. Beating myself up over simple mistakes, like a bad test or forgetting to turn in a homework assignment, probably wasn’t the intention of the people who made those sayings. Fundamentally they aren’t wrong, since humans are indeed social creatures who grow from social interactions, but those people also didn’t consider that humans aren’t limitless, and often they don’t even know where their limits lie. That was where I was for a large portion of my school years, uncertain of where I was in terms of what I could take away from the mistakes I made. So I was stuck in a cycle of beating myself over mistakes, and then feeling bad over it instead of focusing on what I should do to avoid these mistakes, which in turn led to me making the same mistakes and more of them, all the while getting more and more frustrated. It was only recently that I felt like for once I actually began caring about mental health and taking some time off for myself, in which I managed to come to the realization that some mistakes in life aren’t worth brooding over, and I have to let bygones be bygones sometimes. It isn’t rocket science, but it is very easy to overlook, especially for students who can’t focus on their mental state with the workload they have. I foresee that I will continue to make errors in college, and even after graduation, but I also know that I will continue to improve and learn regardless of these setbacks.