One of the first things you’re told about applying for a job is that you need to be professional. Be prepared and do your research. Be aware that you’re competing against other applicants. Make a good first impression. Don’t make mistakes; they could be all that separate you from being hired or being sent home.
For instance, I made a mistake in my written application to Germ Magazine. That may not seem like a big deal; but, when you’re applying for a position where the least that’s expected of you is to have an ability to wrestle words into coherent sentences, making a typo is like revealing every single incompetency you’ve ever had in the first five seconds of an interview. I read and re-read the email so many times that I lost count, but my brain slid over it. By the time I noticed, it was already too late. That’s it, I thought as I stared in dismay at my sent-box. I’ve thrown away my chance, and I’ll never get it back again.
But you know what? You are allowed to make mistakes. You are going to make mistakes. Sometimes life is just a huge bundle of mistakes, and you spend days trying to stumble out of one only to fall straight into another.
Maybe, like me, you’ll mess up en-route to your dream career. Maybe you’ll have a practically certified shot at glory and still manage to mess it up (also me), or maybe you’ll attempt to have an entire phone conversation with someone before eventually realizing you’ve dialed the wrong number (sadly, also me). It’s possible that you’ll also make more serious mistakes than that, and you’ll feel like you’re never going to be yourself again.
I know this feeling. I know what it’s like to doubt yourself, to doubt your values, and to doubt your choices because of some incident that you wish you could forget. I know what it’s like to wonder what if. What if I’d been more confident? What if I’d been more reserved? What if I’d just read over those words once more before I sent them out, never to be taken back? What would be different now if I’d done something differently then?
Mistakes are what you spend your whole existence trying to avoid. They don’t come with a built-in trial run or a handy how-to guide. You can’t just flip to the back for all the answers. They’re painful, they make you miserable, and they make you wish that you’d never set eyes on that boy from Apartment 17. Why would he ever want to talk to a girl who speaks too fast and laughs too much anyway?
But, just because you made a choice that ended in a mistake doesn’t mean that it was the wrong choice for you.
Mistakes teach you that, whether everything you hoped for works out or not, you’ve still got to figure out what to do next. Choices take time to get over, but the world isn’t going to spin to a halt while you work back to where you were before. The sun will rise, and the rain will fall, and a thousand new possibilities are about to spring up in front of you; and, one day, you’re going to notice that if you’d never made that one mistake, something else fantastic would never have happened to you later on.
I’m not saying that crashing into a hurdle at athletic try-outs and failing to make the team is going to make your life totally amazing; instead, you probably won’t be able to stop thinking about it. Finding yourself grounded on the night of the most talked about party of the year isn’t going to somehow reform your character either; weeks afterward you may still be wishing that you’d gone. Neither of these things have happened to me, so I can’t tell you that everything’s going to be fine. I can promise you, though, that these are situations you will learn from. You will learn about what you love and about what you’re willing to work for. Even if you only learn that making mistakes is just part of who you are, then I promise you: It will be worth it.
I made a mistake in my application to be a writer for a magazine, and I assumed that was the end of it. Then, I received an email that not only informed me that I still had a chance at making the cut, but it actually gave me the idea for my very first article. I made my mistake, and I’m proud of what I’ve learned from it.
You are going to make mistakes. You are going to have regrets. You’re going to miss opportunities and suffer the torture of teenage what ifs. However, these missed opportunities have a habit of coming back around when you want them enough, and sometimes what ifs can drive you on to something better. Mistakes are not always going to make you feel wonderful about yourself, but they will always teach you something, and that’s what matters.