I officially completed my MBA yesterday. The final months in this journey I have spent time reflecting on the path I traveled to reach this point. Mainly, I can’t stop thinking about how I failed.

Finishing my MBA is one of my most meaningful successes in my career, but the journey to get here was a road paved with failures bigger than the Indianapolis potholes I navigate daily.

My story starts with a brief history. I started my MBA program at the start of 2017. I felt a little stagnant in my career and was looking for a little challenge. Key word there was LITTLE. I figured I’m a fast learner, I want to learn, and I’m motivated. This will be easy. I’ll do this in 12-18 months, save myself some money, get my MBA, learn and grow and life will be hunky dory.

If you’re laughing at my naivete go ahead. For an adult I really thought I had it all figured out. But life had other plans. I started off strong, but it didn’t last.

Chapter One: Lack of Motivation.

One class in and boom, I’m pregnant. Two years of trying and nothing. Start a class, avoid studying, and I get pregnant. As anyone who’s been pregnant knows, those first weeks can throw you for a ringer physically. I was sick, I was tired, but life moved on and I was holding on trying to move along with it. Then, 180 degree turn, life halted.

I had a miscarriage.

There are no words that will ever describe that feeling. I can still remember telling my student adviser I just couldn’t do any work. Life was a day-by-day situation where I had to narrate every step in my head.

But life didn’t care, my term moved on, so I had to get up and work.

Chapter Two: Lack of Planning & Foresight

Term one isn’t even over and now I’m faced with a deadline of finding a new job. Mine was relocating, I had known for a while, but wonderful adult that I am, hadn’t found a new job yet. Term one ended with me barely scraping by. It was one of those photo finish type of things but I finished those three required classes and for some reason, stuck with it and enrolled in term two.

Chapter two was repetitive; apparently I have skills with lack of planning and foresight. I’m a month into Term 2 and I find out I’m pregnant again. This was joy and fear and every other emotion you can imagine just jumbled up with a bunch of hormones and morning sickness.

Chapter Three: How to Fail with Early Impressions

I get a few job offers. Another range of emotions here. Joy, Fear. That OMG I’m pregnant and about to start a new job feeling! But overall another win for me. I accept an offer and start a new job. Day two on the job and I’m rear ended on the interstate during rush hour traffic. I didn’t need to go to the second day of my new job right?!

At this point my head was spinning. I’ve always been an overachiever. The life lessons in failure were hitting fast and hard. How was I supposed to manage everything: school, a new job, a pregnancy, getting my car repaired, and my responsibilities as a wife and mother.

At this point in term two I really felt like an ultimate failure. I was learning but I wasn’t putting my best foot forward in my work. I wasn’t working fast and accelerating classes and doing the MBA as I had outlined in my head. And it was a lot.

But, thankfully, I had some people in my corner. We all know no one succeeds alone. I know personally I wouldn’t have made past this point without a ton of champions pushing me. So a quick shout out to my husband, Chris, my mother-in-law Bev, and my advisers Denise and Terri, and my motivation, my three-year-old Wes.

Now, back to the story, chapter four: You Think You’re Super Woman, But You’re Not

No matter how many personalized items I buy that say otherwise, I’m definitely not superwoman. I made it to the end of term two and I decided to take a break. I was nearing the end of what seemed like the never-ending story of pregnancies and I was about to grow my family by another baby boy. IT. WAS. A. LOT. I was hesitant knowing how hard restarting would be, but I tried to set my naivete aside and be a realistic woman.

A wild child from the get go, Grayson’s birth was a foreshadow for his personality, emergency c-section less than 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital in labor. I had the baby, I went home, tried to heal, and get a new normal. But life likes to pick fights when you’re down, it’s like that schoolyard bully.

Chapter Five: Failure to Thrive

Life gave me a large incision, a crying, helpless newborn, and very active Post Partum Anxiety. Those are a lot each in their own regard but compiled together, thriving felt impossible. Oh, and I had to start back with term three for school. I sign up. I start. And…I end up in the ER three times. Nothing like some kidney stones to go with everything else. Failure to heal from birth, failure to thrive at life, and a definite failure to do anything school related right here.

But I persevered. It’s kind of my thing. I mean, back in high school I was named a Horatio Alger National Scholar for persevering, I’ve been doing it most of my life, so why stop now.

I had surgery and moved on. I returned to work. I moved through my courses at a snail’s pace. All things looking up on my end. Term three was nearing its end last October. I thought I was in the free and clear.

NOPE. Chapter Six: Failure to Race a Clock.

Life held up the stop sign again. It handed me a present of two ER visits, a four day hospital stay, and two surgeries all in exchange for my gallbladder. I went home to try to finish the term but it’s hard to concentrate when you’re in pain and when you’re taking pain pills. I was up against a clock and I honestly thought I was going to literally fail my class. Thankfully, my support team stepped in again and a supportive mentor and the WGU administration provided me with a medical extension to finish my last course.

Chapter Seven: Failing Myself

The light is drawing near. One more term. One class. One Capstone. Only kidney stones, family illness, another car accident (my husband not me!), and a family death to contend with on the life versus Summer battles. But the term was also the hardest. At this time I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I failed. I failed my original goal to finish quickly. I failed my goal to give it my all and make school a top priority. I failed to be a leader I wanted to be in my Capstone group. I failed to live up to my own expectations.

But, now I know, that’s okay. Because we’re all failures. J.M. Barrie said it before me. “We are all failures – at least the best of us are.”

The last two years and three months were full of failures. Full of despair and times I wanted to give up. But now I’m ready to celebrate the failures.

Because I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t failed. My failures are the roadmap that brought me to this point of success. Success in finishing what I started. Success in achieving a goal. Success in proving something to myself.  Without my failures I wouldn’t have persevered, so my two sons could see me graduate. My failure lead me to earning my MBA.

Now, I’m ready to go out and fail some more. Because, as a wiser man than me once said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”