Success from Failure | Just.Be.Enough.

Us, taken about 2 weeks ago.

My first year of law school, I flunked a class. Contracts I.

I just didn’t get it. And when your entire grade rides on one test for the entire semester and you don’t get it? You flunk the class.

I still remember walking down the hall to see the grades for my number. Each student was assigned an anonymous number, next to which your grade for each class was posted in a hallway of the law school. It’s a brutal system. Watching kids walk up, scan the rows and rows of paper for each class looking for their number and corresponding grade.

You had the kids who would stand there completely motionless and emotionless, so you had no idea how they’d done. You had the cocky ones who would run their fingers down each page, “find” their number (I always assumed they already had come at another time so they KNEW they were in the clear) and tap it loudly saying, “YES!”

The semester I flunked Contracts I, I arrived at a time when no one else was in the hallway to check my grades. Good thing too, I literally sank to the floor in my horror. Depending upon my other grades (which weren’t in yet), that could have been it – I could have been kicked out, not surviving year 1. The infamous “not everyone survives the first year of law school.”

Good LORD, I could be a statistic!

After all was said and done, though, my GPA ended up higher than a 3.0, so they allowed me to stay. I just had to repeat the class the next Fall. With the new first years (which was beyond embarrassing, because there’s only one reason a 2L is in a Contacts I class, right?).

And the other thing I had to do to make up for it was attend summer school, THAT summer. I had to have a certain amount of credits entering into my second year, so summer school was a must.

So I scrambled to find some summer classes.

And I stayed.

Mid June, I met a boy.

And last week he and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.

It’s simple, really:

The only reason I met my husband is because I flunked that class. And if I hadn’t have met him, I wouldn’t have my family. This family that vexes me and exhausts me but gives me more joy than seems possible.

None of it without that flunked class. He was an undergrad business major and I was in law school. There was no other way we would have met.

I’ve always said it’s God’s hand. I ended up graduating from law school in the top quarter of my class, so it wasn’t like I didn’t understand law. Just not that one class.  That semester.

And out of that failure, came the greatest success of my life.

xo

Missy

 

About Missy


Missy Bedell blogs at Literal Mom where she encourages all parents to be thinking parents. She uses wit, humor and sometimes even tears to share her message. But above all that, there is hope, for our next generation. You can also find her on Twitter at @LiteralMom.

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