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Matthew Doan
Ms. Marlowe
Expo R/W P4
4 October 2015
Greatest Failure
The greatest failure, to me, will always be recognized as my greatest triumph. However,
during such a time, I was unable to appreciate such an opportunity and perceived the difficult
experience as a time of hopelessness. During that time, I gave up on schooling, social
relationships, personal happiness, and basically my future. This experience of failure was not
constructed from a single event, but multiple, setting off a chain reaction which ultimately led to
depression. A moment in my life where everything just went wrong and not the way I wanted it
to; where I would just lay in bed either crying or trying to sleep as much as I can so facing reality
was not necessary. However, no matter how much I slept, waking up to reality was inevitable.
The impact of this failure rooted from the expectations of life from which I created.
Growing up, the motto was to work hard, persist with all motivation, and be rewarded in the end.
For the most part, this code that I abided to was effective and at the end of every obstacle or goal
I felt the sensation of it all paid off at the end. By working hard I was able to achieve the
highest rank in Boy Scouts, which only five percent accomplish, by age fourteen. By working
hard I was able achieve the position of Executive Officer in the JROTC program, the second
highest position by the end of freshman year. By working hard, I was able to get good grades in
hard classes and be in the top twelve percent in the class ranking. However, near the end of my

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sophomore year and my entire junior year, even by working hard, nothing went the way I
expected.
At the end of every year in the JROTC program, elections are held for those looking to
hold Leadership positions and are accepted based upon yearly merits and an interview conducted
by certain board of cadets. Near the end of my sophomore year I ran for the position of Battalion
Commander, the highest leadership position a cadet can have. With the current position I held,
the merits I achieved were impressive and consisted of countless hours of hard work as well as
sleepless nights of catching up on school work. I was a dedicated cadet with high motivation and
had peers to vouch for such attributes. However when it came to decide who would hold the
position, the board was split at first, but decided to choose my fellow competitor because of him
being a year older. Despite all the hopes I had and all the hours I spent grinding to have a definite
standing to win the position, I failed.
My following junior year only added more negative outcomes. I took upon multiple AP
classes and continued my career in Track and Field to have a good standing for demanding
colleges. The work load I received in those classes was overwhelming and the subjects proved to
be too confusing. Countless nights were soon spent catching up on late homework and then
afterwards coming to school the next day to take difficult tests and receiving more work adding
to the already enormous pile. In order to maintain sanity, Track and Field became a good stress
reliever. However, during practice, I received a leg injury preventing me to run even a quarter of
my usual strength. I spent days doing extra stretching and spending more time doing the
exercises while feeling intolerable pain. After weeks of recovery sessions, I was able to do a race
in a competition with the result being the injury coming back erasing all prior effort. Despite all
hard work, I faced failing classes and a disappointing end in Track.

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With all these failures occurring, life started to seem more unbearable and insufferable.
The only things I felt were keeping my life positive was my position in JROTC, which many
respected me for and the goal to date a girl I knew for years. However, with the grades I was
receiving, I was let go of my position and the girl I was chasing ended up finding someone else.
Even with all the hard work I have put forth into the JROTC program for years and the amount
of effort to please the girl I wanted, I ended up losing both. At this point, everything I worked
hard for, everything I dreamed for, everything I was motivated for was a failure.
The initial reaction to all of this was not positive. I felt alone and that everyone believed I
was an utter failure. Instead of my parents yelling at me to do better, their eyes just expressed
disappointment which was identical to my teachers. Coming into the JROTC classroom, those
peers that once held signs of respect and inspiration now held faces of shock that asked the
common question of what happened? Everything became so overwhelming and tiring that I
went to sleep as soon I came home. Homework became an unnecessary obligation, school
became a depressing past time, and sleep became a full-time job. The expectation of working
hard and receiving the reward at the end was now nonexistent and the struggles became so tiring
that sleep was the only answer. I became a living representation of the tree that did not make a
sound when it fell, not because nobody was there to hear it, but because my energy turned so
weak that the cry for help was not loud enough.
I was at the lowest point of my life and I felt failure was an obstacle that cannot be
overcome. However, one day I had a revelation and the whole perspective of my situation
changed. While searching videos on the internet, I accidentally clicked on a motivational video
about life. This six minute video led me to listen to multiple videos talking about life and
obstacles for hours upon hours. I then realized that in order to make all the failures not to have

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such a negative impact and to get out of the bottomless pit I was stuck in, I needed to initiate the
change of perspective. Instead of seeing hard work as a negative obligation that seemed
pointless, I needed to view it as an opportunity to better myself as person. Being tired of life and
trying to sleep in order to escape reality did nothing for me because I always ended waking up to
face my depressing position. I realized that I was tired not of life, but of the situation I was in at
the moment; I was tired of sleeping all the time. The reason why hard work was so difficult was
not because of the effort, but for the reason that the results in the end might not always be
pleasing.
Every following day, I had a different mindset of life. All the failures I went through did
not end me, but defined my strengths as it tested my capability to keep on going. I gave
everything more effort and more energy. I spent more time managing my time with homework
and studying harder to understand the confusing concepts. I came to terms with my condition in
sports and JROTC and saw the opportunity to show everyone how bad I want to succeed even if
I have to start from ground zero. I learned to stop negative influence instead of having negative
influence stop me. The girl that left me was negative to my positive mindset, so it was time to
remove that influence and make space for more encouraging ones. The lesson I learned was that
the guaranteed reward from hard work was the satisfaction of knowing I tried my best. Success
in life is based upon the proper belief system of how motivated and dedicated I can be in which
failures only strengthens that belief. Therefore this experience I went through, this failure,
became my greatest triumph.