Look, anyone who says they like to fail is lying to you and probably tells themselves the same thing to sleep better at night. I mean, who truly ever likes to fail at something, let alone admit they’ve failed?

It’s one of those things that’s inevitable in life, though, as much as we try to run away from it or hide from our shortcomings. But as cliche as it sounds (and believe me, I know it’s cliche), failures are kind of the only thing that can show us where to go. Plus, once you realize we’re never going to stop failing at things, you see that missing the mark can actually put things into perspective.

Now, this isn’t something I just recognized one day when I woke up, but it sort of slapped me in the face when I entered my junior season of field hockey in high school.

It had been a pretty hard week of preseason, and I just couldn’t seem to get in the groove of things, so, naturally, I started to shut down and give up halfway through practice. My coach at the time noticed me giving up, pulled me aside, and gave me one of those speeches like, “You can’t just give up when things get hard.” Now, I don’t know if it’s because it was my coach saying this or the fact I was terrified she’d make me run sprints if I didn’t change my behavior, but for some reason, her words repeated in my head for the next few days.

At the end of the week, during a team-building exercise, I felt my coach stick something on my arm. Looking down, it was a sticker that read “Failure is fertilizer.”

When it came time to address the stickers, I thought she would give us the same speech every kid gets, where some adult says, “Oh, don’t be afraid to fail, it’s OK,” but she didn’t. She recognized that failing sucks, but that it’s also a part of life. I don’t know if it was the fact that she was so honest with us or the fact that I had seven stickers on my body, but those three words became seared in the back of my head.

After coming to Penn State, I kind of stupidly thought the hard part of life was over. Sure, I knew the classes would be hard, but no one really tells you about all the little things you have to acknowledge when you move through these four years. Through dealing with balancing a social life, school, finding an internship, and somehow still finding time to do laundry (I haven’t really gotten that down yet), you kind of realize there are way more opportunities to mess up when you get into the real world.

Sure, you’ve got friends and family there to say you’ll do better next time or that the failure wasn’t your fault, but changing your outlook to see failure as a stepping stone, instead of a death sentence, really does work.

I’ve been having what I like to call “That’s So Raven” moments, where whenever I don’t reach my goals, I find myself reverting to my 16-year-old self surrounded by my teammates, covered in stickers with the words of my coach swarming in my head.

It’s momentary, but it’s enough to give me the extra kick needed to keep on moving along these past four years.

While four years somehow does and doesn’t seem like enough time, I think it’s certainly been enough to figure out that I’ll never win Pickles trivia and that Doggies is the best bar in State College.

It’s also given me the clarity to know that joining Onward State was one of the best decisions a Penn Stater can make. Even though it took me until my junior year to apply because I was (shocker) afraid of failing and not making staff, I somehow got hired and kick myself for being too scared to take the leap sooner.

All this to say, take it from a geriatric senior, just take the leap. It’s not like if you fail, it’ll be written on your forehead or a blimp in the sky. If anything, failing gives you a story to tell and builds lore for you to tell your kids in a few decades. So, give yourself the freedom to make mistakes and when you do fail, grab a pint of beer, or chocolate, or maybe both, and try again tomorrow.

Also, if for some reason you’re still reading and you’re not my mom or dad, thank you, and of course, go Phils.