During the Easter break, I had planned a glorious trip to Milan with some friends. As I was stuffing my beach towel, flip flops and dreams of late night dinners into the suitcase that I had paid an ungodly additional fee for, I realised I had left my passport at college.

One last-minute train to Cambridge, raiding through the ADC dressing room, a cancelled passport and a break-down-on-my-carpet later, the trip was torn from my cloying hands by a series of unfortunate fumbles.

“Success doesn’t drive you – it chucks you over a wall only to reveal an even taller wall ahead”

Inevitably, life throws these curveballs, however, in my short time on this earth, I have encountered a rather uncomfortable yet freeing truth: growth is the result of falling flat on your face (or in my case face on your carpet). Everyone here once thought that their life would be complete if only they had an offer from this pillar of education. How could you possibly want for anything when you live on the set of Chariots of Fire (1981)? But success doesn’t drive you – it chucks you over a wall only to reveal an even taller wall ahead. Instead, what stays with us, pushes us to our limits and brings out the best in us are our losses.

When I finally turned 18 in week five of first year and wanted to row, I was told that it was “pretty late in the day” and that I should try to row again next year. Determined to prove my coach wrong, I showed up to all the training sessions, rose at 6:30am and subbed in at every available opportunity. After many weeks of being singled out for my poor technique and weak ergo-score, I finally started to get the hang of it. Others dropped out and gave up, but I stayed on, fueled by my initial failures. My rowing team ended up getting blades and I made fantastic friends and memories, which I would never have got without my sustained effort into putting my best stroke forward.

One of my friends was told when she first started gymnastics that she could never be a real gymnast due to her inflexibility. She worked day and night to improve it, and is now the proud owner of a university blue, having won the gold medal at Varsity with the Cambridge gymnasts.

“Try seeing success as a tally of all the times you pulled yourself up again after a fall”

A casting-director once called Meryl Streep “too ugly” for King Kong, Shakira was told that she sounded “like a goat” and even Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first tv-job for being “too emotional”. Some of the world’s greatest minds never saw the success they deserved: Austen, Van Gogh and Eva Cassidy, are just a few examples.

So whatever it is that you are striving for; that essay-prize, competitive figure-skating, or even that mysterious stranger who somehow always pulls up to the library at the same time as you – shoot your shot! There is nothing wrong with receiving a ‘no’. Rather than endlessly asking: why does this always happen to me, ask instead, how can I make the most of this? Turns out that staying at home for Easter allowed me to help my 16-year-old sister with her mocks; without my tips she would have (doubtlessly) failed them.

Instead of viewing success as a series of material achievements, try seeing success as a tally of all the times you pulled yourself up again after a fall. As a wise philosopher (also known as Shakira) once said: “nobody learns without getting it wrong”.