The most spectacular failer celebrating failure

Oh man, this post is my jam. I'm going to have to spare details if I want to keep people from tuning out. Failure is something I have done A LOT of. In the eyes of some, I've failed even more than I think I have due to differing perspectives; I often reframe failure as progress. The whole "every failure is a lesson" thing is cliched, but hey, the philosophy has always worked for me.

Insert additional cliche about not fixing what's not broken here. 

This semester has had less failure than my previous semesters at the University of Florida. I think now that my career here is coming to an end, I'm perfecting the art of being an engaged off-campus student...which is awfully convenient. Why couldn't I have figured it out sooner? I suppose the answer is that I needed to learn the lesson again and again in various shades and only in time for graduation. Boo. 

So what have I learned this semester? Engage, engage, engage! I've coasted through higher education. I'm not proud of that fact. I have to push myself every day to engage with course material, and the problem is exacerbated by my status as an online student. I thank professors for everything they do to help (jokes, gimmicks, passion); I do see and appreciate the effort.

Let's get painfully specific. I just failed an International Business exam. Technically it was only a fail by my standards--I didn't get an "F"--but it was a fail all the same. It was a fatal combination of general discouragement--unfortunately the professor's insistence that everyone does poorly on the second exam and has to study twice as hard to get the grade they had on the first exam had the opposite of intended effect on me--and life stress brought on by work, school, kids and the death of my grandmother.

It makes me facepalm. This is not the first test I've taken unprepared, and I imagine I'll repeat offend in the near future. When I do something as careless as blowing off studying altogether (then do poorly) the inner dialogue is highly self-deprecating and always turns to "why am I in school, subjecting myself to this added stress anyway?" Stress does not look good on me, and it has become a much more regular force in my life since having children, so stress management is an extremely important work in progress. 

Am I more likely to take a risk now than I was four months ago? No. I think I've always been on the extreme end of risk taking and that each subsequent failure has drawn me closer to calculated risk and away from impulse. I'm impatient and impulsive by nature. Since that's not going anywhere, the name of the game is control, and oh, lucky day, I just so happen to be a control freak. Yay, for Type-A personalities!  

What about you? Yes, you! How do you deal with stress? What failures have you endured recently, and how do you use them to grow?