Thread by @HeyDhriti

At age 19, I'd already had a series of massive failures.

22 academic failures, to be exact.

Here is my STORY on how failure made me a depressed teenager first, and a fearless young adult next.

#hypefurychallenge 👇

Growing up, I was an overachiever. I went for the toughest, most glorious field in mathematics– Actuarial Science.

Coming from a tiny town, I was spending big bucks and living by myself in Bombay.

Hustling, learning, growing.

When you are 17, you think nothing can go wrong.

Guess what? Everything went wrong.

I made hasty academic decisions, took too much on my plate, and failed 22 exams in 3 years.

The reason 22 is a lot– these were very crucial qualifying exams I NEEDED to have in the bag, APART from graduating college.

The result?

I had ZERO wins, no internship, no qualification, a useless degree, and huge debt

while all my peers had jobs.

The depression that was brewing inside me was now ready to be served. Piping hot! ☕

Indian women will agree when I say that I was running out of time to make it big in life.

This kept me going for 4 more years of studying and failing exams,

thanks to anxiety, a sleeping disorder, and the hot pot of Depres—

-ahem, Decaf coffee that we all love talking about☕

I had a few wins in my bag by then, but it was time to quit.

I quit measuring myself on the wrong scale,
I quit damaging my mental health,
I quit letting failures upset me,
I quit decaf coffee.

It was a choice.
🍹

Building myself back up was difficult.

It was worse than seeing my college friends buy cars, or studying hard and missing the bar by 0.25 points.

That's when I realized, I could fail 50 more times and not be surprised.

I know it feels the same every time.

I know how to fail.

All I had to do was choose what to fail at next.

I failed at fixing my sleep cycle, missed the mark by an hour.
I failed at eating healthy, had 2 cheat days in a week.
I failed at losing weight, only lost 5 kilograms.
I failed at blogging, I only write tweets.

I failed better.

In retrospect, I had made hasty decisions, 15 in a row, to set off the chain reaction.

I was able to forgive my 17-year-old self for it once I spent some time with college kids.😂

It wasn't my fault that I was over-ambitious, or that I kept trying.

I'm proud of the grit I had.

And it's OK that I still have decaf coffee sometimes.

Failing a lot so early in life has made me fearless now,

as I embark on new journeys, apply for jobs, or hit the "publish" button.

What's the worst that could happen?

Easy. I'll just fail. And like always, I’ll try again.

I am sharing my story today as a part of #hypefurychallenge.

Come write with me, or check out what I've written so far.

Follow me at @HeyDhriti

and Retweet the top tweet so more people can learn from my failures👇🏻

https://twitter.com/HeyDhriti/status/1437867098911358977