The Art of Failing Forward
In the spring of 2016, I was distraught. It was my sophomore year in high school, and I felt like a failure. Over the past year, I had been rejected by the National YoungArts Foundation in every creative writing and music category that I had entered, left my state’s youth symphony orchestra after having difficulty playing in time, and been soundly trounced by the (very deserving) competition in just about every contest I entered. And I had entered a lot of contests. While I w