What I Learned From Failing at Stanford

I used to get asked this question a lot. “Tell me an example of how you deal with failure.” Common interview question. I always gave the same spiel about how in my first science fair, I didn’t actually win any awards, but I used the learning from that experience to improve my project next year, landing me a spot on the ISEF team. Honestly, I never saw that experience as failure, as I saw it as a learning opportunity and just a fun project that I did, regardless of how I placed. That was how I thought I responded to failure—I thought I could always outrun it with a positive mindset.

So, what happened this year? 

Two weeks into my fall quarter, I had a devastating emergency involving a close friend of mine. It was the first time I had ever experienced or witnessed something like that, and I initially thought I could keep myself together through my logical brain and figure out the whole situation. And I kept it together, even finishing my assignments in the waiting room of the emergency room. After spending the night with no sleep, I showed up to classes and all of my events and meetings like absolutely nothing had happened. In fact, I took pride in the fact that I did not tell a single person what was going on, and that I could fake my way through the day like nothing happened. I don’t know how I did two interviews that day with a pounding headache and shutting off all my emotions. 

The combination of my work schedule and the emotional toll of the stiuation started to flood my life. At some point, I started waking up at 5 AM every morning to finish my assignments, because I legitimately had no other hour of the day besides 5-9 AM to finish my assignments. I was so busy that pretty much every hour of my day was packed with meetings, classes, or events. I even had to put things like “Call Mom” on my schedule for the 30-minute break I had between two classes. I became isolated from my friends because I was working all the time, and I gave up my routines and hobbies because I had no time. Within a short time, my physical and mental health started breaking. This was the first time I felt like I could understand what depression felt like. As much as I work, I always prioritized the fact that I loved my work and I loved what I did. I hated not being in control of my own life and my own emotions. I also didn’t have the emotional stability to help my friends anymore, especially the friends that needed my help. And I felt incredibly guilty.

Many, many years ago, I wrote about stress management and mental health. Yet, this was the first time I truly understood what mental health meant and had to figure out how to cope with what my life was, how I was going to get through my mental and physical state and the mess that my life was in. And this was what I learned.

1. Learning to let things go and accept imperfection

I think this was my first time having to learn how to be kinder to myself and let myself let go of perfectionism. I remember there was a week that I was too busy to finish a math assignment that was due the next morning, and as it hit midnight, I got frustrated and kept thinking that I was going to force myself to finish the assignment no matter what, even if I had to pull an all-nighter. At that time, I was already sick, and I knew that staying up was going to wreck my health. There’s a quote that says that you should treat yourself like how you would treat others. In that moment, it felt like being a third person as I kept telling myself, “it’s okay, it’s okay, just let it go, let it go, you’re okay.” I didn’t complete the math assignment, but I turned in what I had instead of pulling an all-nighter. It ended up not affecting my math grade at all, as we only needed an 80% average on all assignments to receive points. I also had to pass/fail some classes this quarter. I initially was very embarassed of this, thinking that it was just because I was too stupid to handle the classes at Stanford. But I slowly had to work my way to thinking about learning in terms of my true grasp of the material, regardless of my grade. I felt like I did actually understand the content, and I came to realize that I learned quite a lot for the amount of time I had. It was a process for me to learn to be okay with this, that I didn’t have to be perfect all of the time. I had to keep telling myself that in the circumstances of the quarter, I truly did the best I could, and I had to be okay with that. Even if “my best,” in my eyes, was not what I would’ve liked.

While searching things up for this post, I learned that only 30-50% of people have an internal monologue, which was pretty surprising to me. I have a huge internal monologue, so I’m constantly talking to myself in my head. Perhaps it’s just a weird thing I do, but I think it actually helped to put myself as a third person and quite literally tell myself, “you’re okay, you’re okay, it’s okay.” I’d keep repeating myself until I could drown out the other negative thoughts in my head. The internal monologue is challenging sometimes, because I think a lot of the time, my internal monologue is negative and sarcastic. If you were to gather the internal monologue in my head, the most common thought would probably be some variation of, “you’re actually stupid.” I know I say it sarcastically and I don’t truly mean it, but I think this self-hatred and negative self-talk actively perpetuates the harsh criticism that led to my harmful tendancies.

2. Seeing the big picture on how each situation mattered in my overall life

There were two things that kept me going during this time—because of the quarter system, I could count down the weeks until I was done with this, and I had winter break to look forward to. (Although I nearly cancelled my plans for winter break because I was too depressed to do anything.) Because of this, I think it was the big picture that kept me going when I put into perspective how little this seemingly world-ending challenge would be in my overall life. I actually never called myself a perfectionist, because I was never one of the people that had to make their handwriting and desk perfect, but I now realized I always needed to do everything that I expected of myself. I always had to complete every practice exam, do all of my assignments before the deadline, and finish everything I was assigned. When I didn’t have time to do that, I panicked. But in retrospect, I underestimated my quick learning abilities, because I was able to pull off much more with much less preparation than I would have ever dreamed of doing before this. 

3. Accepting help from others and sharing your struggles

I realized talking to others about struggles is one of the huge problems with Stanford. At Stanford, duck syndrome is everywhere. On the surface, it looked like I was doing great. I was still smiling and socializing and acting perfectly normal, but you would have absolutely no idea how much I was struggling when no one was watching. No one ever talks about this at Stanford, and you have no idea how much anyone else is struggling because everyone presents a pristine image of themselves while hiding the part that’s struggling. When I told everyone that I needed to take a break, everyone was super kind and understanding, and offered to take up the work. And I think that’s all I needed from everyone—not for everyone to take pity and try to give me therapy.

During a bonding activity for Alpha Kappa Psi, six of us took a long late-night drive around San Francisco, where we talked about our life stories and our struggles. I think it was that moment that really helped highlight this for me. I had always seen these people as the smartest, most cracked, most put-together people that I knew. And when we all admitted our struggles, failures, and things we were most worried about in the car, I realized that everyone had this part of themselves that you truly would never have known. That made me feel more okay that I didn’t always have my life together.

I don’t think Stanford necessarily needs a stress culture or a depression culture like many other schools. When I first heard about duck syndrome, I was thinking, “what does that even mean?” But the name itself defines it pretty well—looking calm on the surface, while desparately paddling underneath the water. It creeps up on you. I don’t think Stanford students are particularly protective of their image or unwilling to share their struggles, but we just get so used to the expectation of doing well that we don’t often share when we’re not. During this time, I also learned to value deep, substantive relationships more. I’m not a closed off person, but I’m not going to trauma dump on random acquaintances that I only know vaguely. I liked people that gave genuine thought into conversations. Oftentimes, these conversations would help provide insights into my own life and guide my ways of thinking when I could learn how other people thought.

4. Reflect about ways to improve for the future

I often think about what went wrong and what I learned, and how I can do better next time. During this time, I thought A LOT. Through these reflections, I realized the harm of my old mindsets and how unrealistic my expectations were for myself. Instead of insisting on my old mindsets, I had to learn and adapt quickly to my mistakes and understand what I did wrong. Overall, this time, I had to acknowledge my own limitations and actually respect them. I’ve also learned to take a lighter autumn quarter, because autumn quarter is recruiting season for internships and it’s not the time to be super busy. This upcoming quarter, I’ve planned a much lighter schedule, and I’ve realized that despite my hatred for repetition, there are certain aspects of stability that are important to me. I didn’t realize how much having some stability in my schedule contributed to my sense of peace and calm throughout the day until I couldn’t have it anymore.

5. Leaving room for flexibility and spontaneity

I used to think I was a pretty spontaneous person. I liked random adventures and side quests, and I hated the rigidity of routine. In fact, I said (and I still think) I would be least suited for a job that required strict routine and doing the same thing everyday. However, it was the lack of flexibility in my schedule that forced me to be extremely planned and rigid about everything in my day. I was already so on edge about my schedule that I knew even the smallest disruption could throw off my plans, because I had so little time in my day. And when the emergencies happened, I started pushing myself to handle the schedule issues, while burying the emotional toll of other things that were happening in my life. I’ve realized the need for perfection and rigidity of having to rely on my precisely planned out schedule led to a lot of undue stress and pressure when something ran overtime or I did something that wasn’t in my plans. Yet, being a more structured person also had its benefits in helping me plan out a lot more of my ideas. I also got better at prioritizing things I actually found value in, instead of getting distracted by side quests. So, I think the balance is to leave enough time and flexibility for sponteneity, while maintaining the rationality of planning and knowing what exactly it is that I want to do and what is worth my time.

6. Balancing my rationality and emotions

I started relying heavily on the rational and scientist side of my personality to keep everything together, and in particular, burying all of my emotions. I have always been an extremely rational person, as my friends say, very “scientist personality.”

I don’t think I had ever experienced something as emotionally confusing as what happened earlier in the quarter. While I can’t explain what happened due to privacy, it was something I was very closely involved in and required my attention throughout the quarter. On one hand, everything, in the most practical sense, turned out okay. But on the other hand, I was pretty shook to the core. I had never experienced anything of that degree, and while my logical mind knew that I had done everything right and I did everything I could, I think there was an unresolved emotional burden that I kept pushing down and not fully thinking through until it would implode. I still can’t fully rationalize through what it was, why I felt that way, and why it impacted me the way it did. But I guess that’s part of it. I can’t always expect to be able to fully rationalize through all of my emotions, and the discrepancy is what frustrates me when I can’t get myself to follow exactly what my logical mind thinks.

I think acknowledging this learning helped me in my personal life. In lots of aspects of my life, there was a discrepancy between my logical reasoning and how I thought I should act and what I actually did. So, was I deeply unsatisfied with my inability to follow my logical reasoning? Yes, but I guess I have to learn to accept the confusion and imperfection that is emotional thought.

7. Being more grateful for what I took for granted

I called my closest friend one week towards the end of the quarter, and I told him, “I think I’ve just lost everything that I was once confident about.” I used to take pride in my academics, and my grades were in the trash. I took pride in my accomplishments, but I was behind and doing poorly in recruiting, and didn’t have an internship lined up. Even my sense of style and appearance, as I looked like a complete mess and wore the same thing for three weeks straight. I became a lot more grateful as a person, because I realized all of these things that I took for granted were things I could lose. It made me depressed to lose these things that I once took pride in, but it made me more aware of the things I did have. For the first time, I properly thanked my parents for immigrating to the US to give me the opportunities and education I had here.

8. Becoming a better person

Over break, I chatted with a long-time family friend, who was in her 60s and had plenty of lived experiences and wisdom. She told me, “it’s not the challenges you experience, it’s how you respond and react to it that matters.” Everyone has lived through challenging experiences. But the way that you process through challenges can wreck your own life and cause generational trauma. I have my own generational trauma that I have a constant cycle of being trapped in, but I’ve realized the importance of working through this to make sure that I don’t let it ruin my life anymore.

It takes a lot of active thought and effort to pull yourself out of a ditch. It’s easy to feel that you’re just a failure, you couldn’t handle it, you’re just more stupid than everyone else. But, thinking like that only drives you further down the ditch. For me, I started with acknowledging that what’s done is done. Certain mistakes were made, and there was nothing I could do about it. There’s no use trying to decide because my failure was genuinely inevitable, or if it was because of my own lack of intelligence and ability that caused it. I used to be so obsessed with trying to figure that out, figuring out what was my fault and what was my innate unintelligence. What mattered was how I pulled myself out to fix the mistakes in my next steps.

I’m grateful for the circumstances of how my failure last quarter occurred, and I’m grateful for my close friends and family who understood and empathized with what I was going through. Last quarter, I crashed, felt some of the highest highs and the lowest lows in my life, and most of all, wrecked my health and got sick, both physically and emotionally. Yet, I kept saying, “it’s okay, I needed this.” And it’s true. Too many high-achieving students go through high school without ever experiencing failure, and even though I thought I knew failure, I had never experienced mental health, falling behind, and losing my confidence like I did this time. This time, I hope it builds me to become a more resilient, understanding, and patient person 🙂