When I finished high school, I started my studies in Law but failed. What does this mean? Well, what I mean is that I just didn’t finish the career. After one and a half years studying in one of the most prestigious Law Schools in Argentina I realized that this was not my call. Actually what happened was that when I finished high school, I did not reflect about what I wanted for my future. I was more concerned about parties, sports, new adventures and meeting new people.
I followed the advice of my closest relatives who used to tell me “You have the best conditions to be a lawyer. You love talking.” And without doubting, the 17 year-old Santiago started Law School.
But my parent’s dream lasted for 1.5 years and when I told them that I was dropping it, a huge catastrophe started in my family. For me, it was my own rebirth. Choosing my decisions, living my own life and realizing that my parents could not take such decisions for me was a big revolution for a tender youth. But I learnt that nobody else than you knows what you have to do with your own life. And even in moments when you think you are completely lost, just trust the universe that “this too shall pass”.
At the beginning I lived the whole situation as a failure. First of all, it was my first time giving up something really important and I was not used to giving up things. I always fought until achieve my objective. In addition, I also felt as a failure the fact that I was used to be one of the best students in high school leading others and now I was the one behind all my classmates. Finally, I saw it as a failure because I disappointed my parents.
What I learnt from this failure, is that you never know when something is really a failure because in my case, I chose another path, life continued, and here I am! In Washington DC surrounded by great non-profit leaders such as my Fellow Fellows from Atlas Corps.
To conclude, what this experience thought me is the possibility for something new after every “failure” that we face in our lives. In other words, failures do not exist, they are experiences from where we can learn. And learning is always positive.