Fail Fast But Don't Give Up!

|Author: SuKyong|

It is 2 AM now.

Today… no, I mean yesterday, many things have happened. My brain and tongue have refused to speak in English so that I have read numbers in Korean and answered to my teammates in Korea unconsciously. However, I am more energetic and motivated than ever. This is because of two reasons. One is that my team had done a lot of things productively. The other is that I found a solution for organizing an Impact-A-Thon.

Let me briefly explain. Impact-A-Thon is an event that will be held this coming Saturday (February 15th, 2020) with students and practitioners from different backgrounds. I started to organize this event with the hope that college students in Bengaluru can live in a safer environment than they do now. However, I hesitated to mention this event idea to Julian for fear of failure. Before asking Julian, I was scared. I was afraid of hearing rejection from him. But on the other hand, I was also scared of hearing approval from him because then I would have to take care of it instead of just thinking of it!

To be honest, although I have had many failures in the past that are still hard to remember, I never get used to failure. Therefore, I often want to stop trying so that I can reduce the number of potential failures. However, what I have learned during GCIL for the past month is different.

Fail fast. How amazing it is to have a society accepting of failure!

By thinking in this way, I could push myself further to try to ask Sandra whether she would be with me for the journey of planning the Impact-A-Thon. As expected, the journey was not smooth. When I faced the difficulty of fundraising for the Impact-A-Thon, I felt hopeless. I have tried my best but could not get what I needed. Eventually I did not know what else I could do. I thought for a second of declaring failure, apologizing to people for not making the event possible, being sad for a week, putting this into my failure resume and hating myself for trying. However, Hannah’s two-sentences after hearing my concerns woke me up.

“Oh, nothing has worked? Let’s do something about it!"

For a second many questions passed through my mind: Let’s try? Do you want to try with me? Do you think there is away? Maybe, there would be a solution.

Then I sat down and asked myself who I usually ask advice fromin Seattle. I messaged the President of the Korean Science Engineering Association (KSEA) YG Seattle chapter, Terry Kim. I met him through KSEA and have worked with him for six months. I wanted him to give me advice as I used to do in Seattle without expecting anything.

However, after hearing the story of Impact-A-Thon, he asked me how much funding the Impact-A-Thon needs. Long story to short, he brought this up to the KSEA board and they decided to donate for Impact-A-Thon. This happened in two days!

During the preparations, I have gone through quite a lot of rejections both directly and indirectly. However, I also got a lot of support. I wrote their name and things that I appreciate about them down, but I would rather go and talk to them individually about how much I felt thankful.

Everyone in GCIL and outside of GCIL who supported this Impact-A-Thon are the ones who turned this into reality. Although there is no time left, I will try hard to make the Impact-A-Thon impactful for students who do not feel secure.

Although I cannot expect anything for tomorrow, I know it is time to go bed rather than fall asleep dozing off at the cafeteria table.

Good night.