Food for Thought

A colleague of mine just got a bad grade on a class she is taking. I don't know what class it was for, but for second I thought about when I was in college I got an F on the first part of this paper I had to write for a class in "Research Methods in Political Science." Snooze. I was so mortified by my failing grade (I had never gotten anything below a B in college on my papers); in class I sat and bawled. And then I was pissed. So I fought back and got an A on the rest of the paper. When I was a student teacher my final evaluation was satisfactory, but it was not as good as I would have liked. I had a terrible student teaching experience and hated that my poor cooperating teacher essentially screwed me over by not providing any guidance during my student teaching. So I got pissed, and I was determined to overcome that evaluation. My professional teaching experience has gone well in comparison to that first amateur attempt at teaching.

I wonder, when one fails, is it normal to get mad like I do? I don't know if my feistiness is always a good thing (ask my husband), but I think being feisty comes in handy. I suppose I could just roll up into a little ball and slide away, but instead, I become angry. I supposed it's a general feeling of "F You" to the person who graded me, and a determination to prove him or her, and myself, wrong. But is this normal? I don't know.