The Motivation of Disappointment

“I let him down”. This is all I could think of for the entirety of the week. It was a feeling of dissatisfaction that only intensified every time I entered ISM. I was deeply disappointed in myself for what I allowed to happen, for ruining his trust, and I’m sure that “he” was too. I was once told by this man, “I’m expecting you to be the leader, especially in this ISM class”. I was supposed to set the bar for the rest of my peers, to lead by example, and to define excellence, instead, I fell to below mediocrity.

I had to give a 10 minute speech regarding the research I had been doing in ISM, last Tuesday, November 8th. At first, it didn’t seem like too much of a formidable task. I trusted my speaking skills to be adequate at worst, so I thought that I could get through this speech no problem. I typed out 3 pages for the speech so that I would know what to say, even if I didn’t memorize the lines word for word, I would have a sufficient idea of what to speak about. I had my powerpoint ready with the slides full of references to look back on. I even had the coins in my left pocket for my magic trick as discussed last week. The only components I was lacking were confidence and preparation, one which is brought by other.

My lack of preparation led to the utter downfall of my speech. I had practiced close to the first half the speech twice, past which I had not given it much consideration. This was a terrible move as this speech ended up being one of the worst ones (in my opinion) that I had ever given. My classmates tried to reassure me that it was a very good presentation, but I knew It did not live up to mine or my ISM teacher’s expectations. We both expected so much better from me, and letting him down in such a way was devastating,

Carrying this guilt with me, I tried to use it as motivation to improve my speaking tenfold the next opportunity I had. Thankfully, this opportunity came the following Saturday, November 12th. On this date, i attended my second ever varsity debate tournament. With the determination to improve my speaking skills, I put my best effort into the debate, amassing 3 straight wins with a perfect speaker point record. My last round was the most daunting due to my mental fatigue, and though I won all 4 of my debate rounds, I lost 2 speaker points in the last debate. This allowed my to place third in the entire tournament (out of 73 other people), and for this being only second tournament, and having stepped up my speaking so much from my mishap with the ISM speech, I felt that I had compensated for my failure. The disappointment I felt after my speech truly came back and stuck to me as motivation, allowing me to excel. This reminded me that no loss is a true failure, but an opportunity to grow.