Essay 2
 
Describe a situation (professional, personal or academic) in which you did not meet your objectives and explain what you learned from it. (500 words)
Professional or personal mistakes should not be seen as failures, rather they should be looked at as opportunities for growth. The lessons that can be learned from mistakes can be more valuable than any lesson that can be learned from a textbook situation. In my life, I constantly analyze situations and try to understand the nature of mistakes in order to avoid repeating similar mistakes in the future. This philosophy has allowed me to learn from my mistakes while never losing focus on the objectives of the situation.

When I was at university, I took a very informative course in Organizational Behavior. One of our tasks during the course was to organize ourselves into groups of ten students, with each member in the group required to send an e-mail to a given e-mail box between 22:00 and 22:05 at night. If all members of the group sent the e-mail at the specified time, all group members would receive full credit. If one or more of the members failed to do so, no one in the group would receive any points. The first day, three of the five groups successfully completed the task, including my group. All of us were very happy about this and we congratulated ourselves on our ability to work as a team.

The next night, once again the teacher assigned the same task to the three successful groups, with the time to send the e-mail changed to between 00:55 and 01:00 in the morning, and even higher points rewarded. All of our group members agreed that again this would be no problem. Unfortunately, I spent the entire night studying and forgot about the time. When I finally looked at the clock, it was already 00:57, giving me only three minutes to send my e-mail. At the moment that I was finally able to click on the “send e-mail” button, my clock showed 01:00. My hope was that I had luckily sent the e-mail at the very last moment and thus successfully accomplished the task.

The next day the teacher announced that only one of the three groups had successfully accomplished the task again, and my group was not the one. I felt that I had really let the others in the group down through my negligence. Although I had failed, I realized what it was that the teacher was trying to show us – the significance of the whole group working as a team. In a group or team, everyone must play his or her role and fulfill his or her own responsibility. In this situation, even if only one person out of ten did not accomplish his or her task, the entire group would fail. The lesson that I learned was that the pursuit of individual rewards (studying on my own) should not get in the way of the goals or objectives of the team. The experience that I have gained from this lesson has made me realize the importance of teamwork in reaching objectives in the future.