Up until college, I never really had to worry about my grades. Admittedly, I was an honors kid who coasted through classes without really trying. I cared about doing well, but never really had to stress myself out over my grades, because they always seemed to just fall into place.

Fast forward to college, and something happened: life got harder. I was trying to balance working two jobs, extracurriculars and maintaining a 4.0. And, well…it stopped working. I fell behind in several of my classes; my workload began swallowing me whole. I missed deadlines and failed tests, and one day, I got an email from one of my teachers containing the following sentence: “If you can’t pull yourself together and get your grade up, you are going to fail this class.”

I cried. I hyperventilated. I went into the bathroom at work and sobbed over the phone to my boyfriend for twenty minutes. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I was a straight A student and now was at the risk of failing a class (and had sub-par grades in several others). What if I ruin everything? What if I can’t graduate on time? What if I don’t get into grad school? What if I have to drop out of school and become a black market rolex saleswoman?

I began reflecting on everything that could have gone wrong. I was busy, but being busy had never hindered my academics before. My classes weren’t a cake walk, but they surely weren’t anything I couldn’t handle content-wise. The only conclusion I could come to was the following: I was a stupid failure who would never achieve anything in life.

On the outside, it seemed like everyone I knew had their lives together. I was embarrassed to talk about my struggles because I thought I would be perceived as stupid or lazy. As silly as it sounds, it felt like there was some figurative “good scholar” card I would have to turn in.

I eventually opened up to others and they opened up to me. I learned some of the smartest, most important people in my life had faced similar situations. If I didn’t think they were losers, why should I view myself as one? I pulled myself together and got my grades back up, but it wasn’t easy. I’ve learned that’s okay; if everything were easy, nothing would be worth being proud of.

Nobody enjoys talking about personal failures, so we often don’t know other people have them. But know this: failure happens more than you think, in people you may not suspect. By no means does a failed test (or even a failed class) mean you are stupid. Intelligence is not measured on a scale of A+ student to college drop-out.

As you get back on your feet and try to figure out what went wrong and then work to fix it, you’re doing everything you should be doing. If anything, every struggle is an opportunity to learn something, which can be far more beneficial in the long run than getting it right the first time.

Failing does not equal failure, but staying on the ground and accepting defeat does. Get up, dust yourself off and try again.