To err is human..To learn divine !!

This is an incident that happened last year during my term as Senior Technical Officer at SFMC,which i a sense 'awakened' me. During the SE quiz that the society conducted, I was responsible for the software which was essentially required to conduct the quiz. I had been working for the whole of previous week(with just 4 hours of sleep, which defines my 'maximum effort'). I had tested everything at home, and it was almost done but, during the break, I found out that some things didn't work as desired, and I continued debugging till the start of the quiz.But typical of me then (and probably even now), my mind couldn't work under so much pressure and the software didn't work for one round of the quiz. We had to do with manual display and scoring, (which was the last thing we wanted to do given that the interactive-thing was the essence of the quiz)..

I was heart-broke. My first big assignment as an STO and I failed! The event had almost failed I thought. I just left the comp to my juniors and left.My senior Sriram prepared some last-minute alternatives and the event concluded with his help. I couldn't stand up or even say a word. I doubted my own capability given that I had Deepan,'the God', as my colleague,but I took the whole job onto myself and failed miserably. Probably I was the least worthy for this job. Probably I shouldn't even have attempted this task. I was being way too over-confident of myself, I thought..I went to the first floor and literally started crying. Setu Gupta, another senior of mine came to me. 'I'm resigning tomorrow, I said'. And the rest of the conversation are those golden minutes of my life...

Setu calmed me down and said..'You have failed, you want to leave. What good had this done? What have you gained as a council member? Have you learnt nothing from this? Do you want to fail again when under a similar situation? Whatever has happened, has happened. The event is over now..You tried your level best, only that you needed to be more disciplined and should have tested everything earlier. The next time, you'll never make such a mistake again and that's what is the positive result of this incident. You'l fail not just because your s/w didn't work, but because you didn't even care to learn from it.'.. I just thought about these words as I returned home..Never in my life have I faced failure with this attitude. Yes..that's how this post will benefit me and the forum. Once you fall into a pit, you don't stay there forever..but stand up and see to it that you don't fall into it again..

It was as if I had got a new life from the next day. From that day onwards, whenever I fail (or for that matter, if anyone around me fails), I stop, analyse, learn, improve and move ahead. This
has helped me improve myself not just technically, but on other fronts too. I am not perfect, but it's good that I come to know of my imperfections early, so that they do not show up in the future. Those golden words from that genius let me see life differently..