Building Resilience in Coding
By Anonymous Failure happens almost every day in coding, and it is inevitable. Computer Science students in fourth and second year reflect on their experience with building resilience in coding. Your code will fail a…
Search by month: january 2023
A Deferred Exam
By Anonymous I once did a module based on the writings by a specific author, and by the end of the course I still hadn’t read a single book by them. I revised for the exam as much as I could, but had to defer it until…
Falling Out of Love With My Major
By Anonymous I felt like a failure after I came to the University of St Andrews being very passionate about my subject at first, and then falling out of love with it. The fear of the situation happening again stopped…
A Fundamental Mistake in a Published Paper
By Anonymous A group of researchers, including me, doubted a common theory that used to be taken for granted as being true. We were looking for a clear way of showing where our hesitations came from and how to prove…
Losing the Elections
By Anonymous My experience with sports club elections taught me a lot about resilience. In the end of my third year, I was very keen to join any sports club committee and ran for the same position in a few clubs. I…
Story from Pat Mathewson, President of the Students’ Association 2014/15 & 2015/16
By Pat Mathewson I have always been interested in student advocacy, which requires public speaking skills. Lacking these skills made me feel like a failure. In my first year, when I had to present to the whole room, I…
Story from Kyle Blain, DOSDA 2015/16
By Kyle Blain In 2013, I was responsible for organising Jailbreak, a race in second semester where the teams have 36 hours to get as far away from St Andrews as they can. The event was well attended, and we decided to…
Advice From Dr Chris Hooley
By Dr Chris Hooley You have to understand when you are shying away from something for emotionally driven reasons. It is very easy to make your mind think about other things in the academic environment, and to be…
Advice on Failure
By Staff at Student Services Look at things in perspective. Challenge negative thinking by analysing what you did right. Failure is part of learning, and you should give yourself credit for what went well as well as…
The History of Failure
The YouTube channel The School of Life has an interesting video on the history of failure as an idea, and how it has evolved over time. Give the video a watch, or read some of the highlights below! Highlights: Greek…