Celebrating Failure

One instance of failure for me was at work. Although I am a business management major, I am also a pre-dental student. Because of this, this past summer I became a certified dental assistant and began working at a practice here in Gainesville part-time. One of my responsibilities was to take impressions, or molds, of peoples' teeth. When I first started, I was absolutely awful at it. I had to retake the impressions multiple times on the same patient because I could not get it right. Usually, if I could not get it right within the first two tries, I let another dental assistant do it. After having taken nearly 15 bad impressions back to back to back, it became a little demoralizing, especially because all of the other dental assistants could take them properly and I was the only one who couldn't.

I watched another dental assistant do it a few times before trying again and asked for tips. After having done this, I realized what I had been doing wrong the entire time and gave it another go on the next patient that needed impressions. The impressions came out perfectly. And yes I was quite proud of myself. Not only did it come out right on that patient, but I also got it right on the next four patients.

I suppose the lesson I could take away from this is to make sure to learn whatever I can from those people who have more experience or knowledge than I do. Had I consulted one of the other dental assistants sooner, I may not have taken 15 bad impressions. That number may have been cut down to just five or six.I was a bit hesitant to ask, though, because I was a bit embarrassed that taking impressions was a skill that everyone else in my office had perfected, except for me. I didn't want to admit that I couldn't do it properly.

In general, everyone hates failure, myself included, and when you fail over and over again, especially at the same task, you start to lose confidence in yourself. When you fail at completing a task, it should not be taken that way; rather you should examine what exactly went wrong in your attempt and try to correct it. That is the only way that you can FINALLY be successful. Taking good impressions was an example of that for me.

I hate to be a downer, but honestly, I don't think this class has changed the way that I view failure. The view I stated in the paragraph above is the view I came into the class with and it is the same view that I still hold. This class did make me think consciously about failure and the way that I handle it, and forced me to put it in words, giving me a more clear view of the perspective that I have. It is not that my perspective has changed, but it has just been made more clear to me, if that makes sense.