ISALC, Lewis and Clark College

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Life Is Like a Marathon Race by Hiokazu Tsuzuki

 

"I received the letter about your entrance exam, and you failed it," my mother told me after taking the entrance exam for a private junior high school. Actually, throughout my life, taking exams has bothered me, and I never have passed a significant exam on the first try. I know significant exams make many people nervous, but my case is more terrible than others. I understand that failure of an important exam is miserable and sad, but in spite of my experiences of failure, I can somehow manage to accomplish anything that I set my mind to.

First, finding a job was impossible for me when I was a Japanese university student. The impossibility was due not only to the sluggish Japanese economic circumstances but also my age. At that time, I was twenty-five-years old, but almost all job offers, especially good positions, required applicants below twenty-four years old. The restricted age of applicants is common in Japanese society because a lifetime employment wage system is based on age, and companies try to find young people to save their expenditures. Therefore, not having the opportunity of taking an exam to get a job strongly shocked me, and indeed, this was worse for me than failure of an important school exam. Until now, that event was the worst experience in my life.

Before that, I tried to enter a university in Japan, but it also evaded me and required an extra three years. After graduating from my senior high school, I took some entrance exams for universities, but I could not pass any of them. Then, I had to go to cram schools for three years. In other words, I had failed to pass all entrance exams during three years. Until the second grade in cram schools, there was still somehow an optimistic view in my mind. However, in the third grade, I had a strongly pessimistic feeling because of my bad grade, getting old and the passing of entrance exams by other younger students. Indeed, at that time, I could not understand what I should do, and once thinking about the entrance exams, abnormal thoughts eternally bothered me, invaded my mind. Finally, although I ultimately passed an entrance exam, the academic reputation of my university was low, and I was not satisfied with my university at that time (now, I really love my Japanese university because professors in my university were really good for me and respectable).

My latest failure of a significant exam was the TOEFL. After giving up finding a job in Japan, I had studied English for TOEFL, but as usual, the score was bad. Actually, although I had spent much time to read English passages and to understand grammar rules every day, my score was never over 550 points. However, the terrible score did not damage and shock me so much because of my vast experiences with failure of exams. In other words, the experiences of failure on previous exams allowed me to adjust to that without damage to my self-esteem.

Moreover, I now realize that my past failures on exams has, in some ways, helped me, and my positive and healthy frame of mind is in some ways indirectly connected with my poor performance on exams. Because of my poor English ability, even now, I sometimes pessimistically scream to myself, like "The Scream" painted by Edvard Munch, especially when I am thinking about my peers, age and future. However, my self-esteem is moslty positive and healthy. I always tell myself, "Life is like a marathon race. I do not have to do everything quickly. Like my many failures of significant exams, I have done almost everything with difficulty." With such a positive and gentle frame of mind, now, I believe that the experiences of failing exams is not only useful for my life, but also will help me to find a job in my country after graduating from this college. Now, my final goal in the long marathon race is still ambiguous, but a healthy and positive frame of mind may help carry me to my final goals through my life.

Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 9/24/99