 I went to undergrad right out of high school and I wasn't particularly mature, ready for it necessarily. As is true for a lot of students and I kind of messed up the first two years. I ended on a high note and from there I went to the Peace Corps. I lived in Africa for two years, learned a lot, came back, went to grad school, got my masters in English. And at the same time I was doing that, I was teaching at a major university. So 20 years later I wanted to go back and learn Spanish at the same university and when I applied to my great embarrassment and sadness I was rejected because of the damage I had done to my grade point 20 years earlier. So I felt sorry for myself for a few days and then I decided I had to do something about it and I contacted the department, the College of Humanities and I explained to them that I taught there and wanted to know what I could do to repair the situation. And within a day I had a phone call from one of the associate deans and said we didn't see your application. I'd like you to reapply and let me know when you've done it. And that's exactly what I did. He reviewed my application, saw that I'd been a good student as a grad student and they admitted me to the school and I learned Spanish. I would remind myself and anyone who is listening to this story to go ahead and feel what you need to feel in that moment but pick yourself up and reach out to the people who can help you. Not just to the people who are going to listen to you, be sad or angry but also people who don't know you, who can help you achieve whatever you have failed to achieve. It was really hard at that time because my parents were splitting up, there was a lot going on and maybe I would just let myself forgive myself for messing up that there were a lot of reasons why I was messing up and that I was allowed to be distracted from my studies at that time and everybody messes up and that's when you learn. When you really learn is when you realize you don't want to feel that way anymore and certainly there was nothing catastrophic that caused me to start getting good grades. I just hit a rock bottom point where I just said this has to stop. I just can't feel this way anymore and I'm going to flunk out and that's not an option so what do I need to do to stop that? And I doubled my grade point in one semester. It's just really critical that you listen to yourself, be who you are and listen to your true voice inside yourself and tune some of that other stuff out when it becomes overwhelming because I think it can guide you in directions that you really don't want to go and that you know you don't want to go but you're not sure how to veer from them.