Almost every day I check my Facebook solely for the memories page to see what crazy thing I posted back in the day before I became the person who I am today. Honestly, the only difference between myself on social media 10 years ago vs. today is that I just don’t hit the send button on a lot of things. Sometimes I missed the days when I would just let my thoughts fly freely but I can’t I’m something like a professional now. Anyway back to Facebook memories, today Facebook dropped a gem on me that had me reflecting way too early in the workday. 8 years ago while taking a summer school class to save my graduate assistantship, I received an A- in that class. I was actually excited, I accomplished something I didn’t think I could, and I made good on a promise. Little did I know this A- actually meant the end of the road for me at Radford.

Radford University was rough for me. Radford, VA was rough for me, between being 2,500 miles away from everyone I loved, outside of the relationships I built there I absolutely hated everything about that place. I battled depression at Radford, and instead of talking to someone and dealing with it, I hid it and battled it alone in my room especially during those snowy days. Around October I completely cut off my entire world back home, I walked away from my girlfriend (it’s ok we are happily married now, she forgave my dumb ass), stopped calling home and just tried to power through the 2 years to get a Masters in a program I didn’t really care about. I went to Radford for the all wrong reasons. I didn’t care about the program I enrolled in, I was getting my Masters because I didn’t know what else to do after undergrad. All these things added up and eventually got me dropped from my program at Radford because I failed to maintain a 3.0. For as much as I hated Radford and my program, I was devasted. For the record the program wasn’t bad that’s not what I’m saying, I just wasn’t committed to it. I’ve experienced failure before but nothing to this magnitude. I’ve lost championships, battled academic probation but to be disqualified was a whole another level. I failed myself, my family, and my extended family the Cotton’s who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. To top all of that off, a childhood friend, younger brother, was murdered a day after I received news from Radford my appeal had failed. I was heading back to Compton as an unemployed graduate who just got dropped from his Master’s program. I was a mess, but I wasn’t lost.

If I hadn’t made it clear yet, Radford was a terrible experiment that failed, but it made me a stronger man. It gave me clarity, I knew what I wanted to do moving forward, I knew what I had to do moving forward. I was fortunate enough to be a resident director at Radford University the one year I was there. Throughout my college career, I laughed at the notion of working in higher education. I love sports, my career was going to be sports related, and there was nothing no one could tell me. Well at Radford, the situations I saw, the students I helped pushed me head first into higher education. Talking to an 18-year-old kid through their parent’s divorce or convincing a young lady her life is worth living gave me more satisfaction than any sports-related event ever did. When I left Radford, I was determined to enroll in a Higher Education Master’s program and pursue that career to the fullest.

That’s exactly what I did, 6 months after being kicked out of Radford I was enrolled in a new program and had a new job working in University Housing at Cal State Monterey Bay. Things were different this go around, I was invested in every book, every article, every discussion regarding the higher education system. At Radford I struggled to engage in class, I didn’t care, I got B’s and of course I got C’s that sent me home. But in my Higher Education program, I didn’t get less than an A. I’m now almost 8 years deep in my career as a higher education professional and still wake up every morning excited to go to work. Even though I worked in places that have tried to still this joy, the impact and the importance of the work I do keeps me going forward.

So what is the point of this post? Sometimes failure is just preparation for your next chapter. I wholeheartedly believe if Radford never happened, I wouldn’t be here today. I wouldn’t have worked with and helped so many students in this 8 years. Failure sucks, it hurts. No one ever sets out to fail, maybe scientist and some researchers. But in general, that’s not how we as humans operate. So when failure does occur it could devastating. I’m saying maybe, just maybe your failure was designed by a higher power to prepare you for your future. Master Yoda said it best, “the greatest teacher, failure is.”