26A – Celebrating Failure

Failure. It’s a term I struggle with more than anything in this world. Not only did I fail this semester, I had to admit defeat and wave the white flag. FIN3403, Professor Banko’s class. It did me in. It wasn’t for lack of trying or busting my butt. It took me down, it took me down hard, and I had to hang my head down as I admitted failure. Professor Banko states during each class, how hard the class is and how hard it is to pass the class. It’s difficult to hear that every day from a professor, but I became numb to his words as I studied and did my best to get through each lecture and assignment. During the first exam with 15 minutes left, my computer lost the connection to ProctorU. I had never experienced this before, and I almost lost my mind. I had studied for days, drank more energy drinks than I could count and then the unthinkable happened. I was able to get back to the exam with minimal time remaining, but my head was scattered and I lost complete control over my emotions. Professor Banko gave me points for questions I did not answer, but it didn’t help. I still failed miserably. He told me not to worry, the second exam was coming, and I would be ok. Um…not quite. The second exam happened to coincide with quite a few work issues: Fiscal Year 21 Budget Cycle, upgrade to our vendor registration platform and the onset of COVID-19. It was a trifecta of circumstances that I refused to let get in my way of passing Business Finance. I was wrong. No matter how hard I tried, how hard I studied and how hard I worked, I failed again. It became evident I was not going to graduate in December like I had planned. The light at the end of my tunnel was no longer visible. I even questioned whether or not I was good enough to be a UF Student. I didn’t understand it then, but I see now, it was a blessing in disguise to fail both exams and drop the class. Why? Because shortly after Exam 2, Palm Beach County went to a Level 2 Activation, which meant I was going to be working 6-7 days a week (8-10 hours per day) for the foreseeable future. What else happened? School was cancelled. I have an 8-year-old daughter in second grade, which means I now have to homeschool her, and work. What happened after the schools closed, I could not have made up myself. For starters, an employee of mine tested positive for COVID-19 on March 23rd. For the record, I have three employees who work under me. Due to the positive test, I was required to send another employee home for two weeks to self-monitor. My last employee, fearful for her life, decided she needed to go home as well. As of March 23rd, I have done my job, the job of my employees and my fulfilled the duties of my County Activation position. In addition, due to the Governor’s Safer-At-Home Order, our staff of 30 was down to 10. Between April 1st and April 3rd, our department watched 20 staff members get approved for 30 days of administrative leave under this order. The last nail in the coffin was one of my employees submitting their two weeks’ notice after they accepted a position with another Department within the County. I told you I could not make this up.

We have 10 people working in our building, and we had to figure out how to keep operations afloat. How did we do that? Prioritizing. We had to prioritize everything. Second, we had to make announcements and send out correspondence to other County Departments and vendors stating the status of our operations and what services would be available to them for the month of April. Next, we cross trained staff to ensure any one of us could complete an assignment for either section of our Department. Finally, we had to modify our current practices to complete our processes and procedures. The ironic part in all of this…our operations have maintained. The downside in all of this, managers are seeing which employees are doing their jobs, and which ones are doing just enough to get by. No longer are the stronger employees carrying the weaker employees. Although as managers, we already knew we had weaker employees, we did not know the extent of their weakness until now. It has been an eye-opening experience to say the least.

In the middle of experiencing failing business finance, I thought my college career was over. I thought I was just not meant to have a Bachelor’s degree from UF. I felt like I was not good enough. However, hindsight is always 20/20. Today, I can sit here and say withdrawing from business finance was the right thing to do. I could not imagine trying to keep up with two classes while going through all of this. Failure does not mean you lose. Failure is a teachable moment. You only lose if you do not learn the lesson.