Flunking at school.

And a handful of things worth sharing

Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash

People flunk school, and that experience affects their approach to everything else. I don’t know if you’ve ever been held back a class, unable to gain admission to university because of grades, or unable to graduate because of grades…especially if you come from a place where academic success means almost everything to many parents and guardians.

Failing school makes you feel inadequate.

If you were once a bad student and never got better, you’ll probably feel like you’re not one of those people who achieve things for a long time. Sometimes, even for the rest of your life. Because failure makes people feel inadequate.

And that’s okay.

We don’t have to recalibrate the entire education system to weed out that reflection of the real world. Of real life. It happened to Lionel Messi, it happened to Michael Jordan, it happened to Lebron James. It happens everywhere. In sports, in professional life, in creative endeavour…So why shouldn’t it happen in school?

Don’t solve for failure or success. Solve for confidence. The confidence to fail, the confidence to try again, and the confidence to admit to yourself that there is nothing wrong with being bad at something you’re not good at, and there is nothing wrong with being required to be good at something to be considered worthy of conquering it.

Look I’ve seen people thrive studying degrees I would never have survived although I was likely much smarter than them.

We underestimate the power of discipline. Not its power to make us the best or to make us automatically the greatest at anything we want to be great at. We underestimate the power of discipline to improve our outcomes and help us become better than we ever imagined we could be at anything.

I once had a friend who was terrible at math for a very long time. She flunked it hard. And eventually, fast forward a couple of years, she became one of the best students at commerce among her peers. She didn’t become a math guru overnight—heck, she never did. We both met each other again years later when preparing for our high school finals. We were both in the “slow class” struggling to grasp basic algebra and differential equations. But she became much better than she could have ever thought she could be at anything related to mathematics.

Look, like most things in life, school is not for everybody. And there’s nothing wrong with identifying your strengths and pursuing them to the best of your ability. You don’t have to be good at everything you’re bad at. But if ever, once in your life, you can get good at something you were once bad at, I can’t begin to express what that does for your confidence.

Here are some things worth sharing

• I’ve been using Apple Intelligence for nearly a month and have to say I’ve been slightly disappointed. While I did expect a quiet rollout and a light feature set, it’s been even more dismal than imagined. This video, although far more scalding than I would like my darling company to be slandered, gives an accurate depiction of how Apple seems to view AI: For the Stupid Ones

• I was assigned to write an article on child labour this week and in the process of doing that, I stumbled across this report that painted a poignant image of the plight of adolescents shipped from low-opportunity communities to the city to work as “house helps”, guided by empty promises.

• This week I was privileged to start and finish Special Ops Lioness season 1. I think more people should take advantage of that privilege.

• A run-off on that point, one of my favourite quotes from the show comes from the lips of Errol Meade (Martin Donovan):

  “Be greedy when everyone else is scared and scared when everyone else is greedy”

• I made a short film earlier in 2024 and now we’re trying to push awareness for it. You can read about it on Business Day and Vanguard Newspapers. Thank you to everyone who’s subscribed to YouTube so far. If you haven’t, you still can.

Thanks for reading this week.

See y’all next week ✌🏽