Learning from failure

Earlier today, I wrote my managerial finance exam and in all likelihood will not pass the course. Beyond the fact of it being demoralizing and the fact that I will be re-taking the course in the fall barring an unlikely grade curve, I'm grasping at straws for a silver lining and not finding one. If anything, it's made studying for tomorrow's marketing exam that much tougher. Such is the gloom in the house today (since Jen had a rough day at work as well) that even the arrival of my off-campus work permit today - ahead of schedule, even - barely stood out. Wisely, Jen picked up a couple of bottles of beer for us, one of which I downed gradually as I felt sorry for myself.

Getting an F in something makes the good marks I've earned worth something, I suppose. And it'll give me that much more drive to improve my quantitative skills over the summer, which I'd already planned on doing. I just hate the feeling I get that other of my classmates can seemingly get something more intuitively, while my level-best effort wasn't good enough to pass.

Another expensive lesson, I guess, as I also have to borrow a significant amount of money from my parents after other best efforts didn't bear the financial fruit that I thought they would. It's like a mortgage at my old job where it fell apart despite my best efforts, and just as in this instance, it's money out of my pocket not being able to close the deal. But that doesn't mean that my next opportunity to excel (as an old high-school teacher one dubbed his tests) won't be the one that gets me over the hump. I have to maintain the mentality that I've succeeded just by getting here, and that the opportunity is mine to lose. But it's in that vein that I'm most frustrated, having done my best, but still having come up short.

This time.

Weird oldness

Today I realized that I missed seeing my friend Matt play here in Toronto with his band, Comeback Kid, for the second time since moving here, and got a little depressed at how I can't afford the time or funds to go out and see shows. This was on the heels of listening to a ton of Grieves yesterday while studying finance, happy that I'd discovered a new MC to get excited about. The absence of playing music in my life has been difficult with the stress and time demands of school, like the colors of the world have less vibrance. (That, and being in a business school environments where other students either seem to go out 'clubbing' or not at all, has been a drag.)

Then this afternoon, Jen and I were having was having a conversation with Jen about bears, natural selection, human ethics, and bus tours, and suddenly found myself excited about the future prospect of taking a bus tour out to Banff where we could see wild grizzlies and amazing vistas. Lo and behold: another cliched getting-older moment! I should be so lucky to think about that, a day after my friend Ben (in town on business from Seattle) asked if there we felt trapped in town without a car; at that point, I'd mentioned the possibility that she and I could probably take a bus or train out to Stratford-upon-Tyne this summer for their annual Shakespeare festival.

Lots to do here, even though I often feel guilty about spending the smallest amount of money at all with how broke we are tight money is (trying to stay positive!). And as if on cue, I need to get out to Canadian Tire and pick up a cheap vaccuum that's on sale so that we can finally clean up our bedroom (shh! don't tell the landlord!), even if it does take me away from my finance study.

Woe be to me the next time I have to dive into such a dry, analytical subject again. My visual-storytelling brain doesn't do well with it, has no interest, and forces me to go against my natural instincts of avoiding something that I truly don't care if I ever see again.

And thus the sun returns, beckoning me outside, to get on with it, just like everything else I have yet to do today, and for the next two weeks.