When it’s not your fault

In my eight or so years enrolled in higher education—this is after undergraduate mind you—a lot of unexpected things have happened to me and not all of it has been my fault. I’ve noticed that much of higher education is in the unpredictable sphere where anything can sort of happen. There is this subjectivity I’ve with evaluation after the coursework phase of education concludes so that anything can sort of go when it comes to promotion. It’s not necessarily a strictly fair thing, and if you’re thinking about staying in higher education as an educator, there needs to be this element of luck to it for it all to happen. 

But what if you’re like me and end up as one of the unlucky ones? Well, there’s this common saying that you only learn from failure (i.e., rather than success). It’s an interesting perspective because I think on some level, the unluckier path could be the more educational of the two in the long run. I don’t know, and only time will tell on this one. Yet, I’ve felt that despite my ambition and willingness to go above and beyond in academia, there’s only so much you can do when, for some reason, you reach a ceiling in advancement associated with your environment, your project, your peers, etc., etc. It’s all sort of random at the higher education level and not necessarily your fault at the end of the day if things turn out disastrously wrong. Higher education can be a crapshoot.