Failing my driving test helped me believe in myself for the first time

Learning to drive was a cobweb in the corner of my conscience, and I wanted to hit it with a broom. If I’d been able to embrace the fact that I was bad at it, I would have got better, but instead I sulked and stalled – literally and figuratively.

My all girls’ school was academic, fiercely competitive and full of students who regularly aced everything on the first attempt. We were very privileged and taught by teachers who fostered confidence and celebrated our belief in our natural intelligence. We thought being smart was significant, but this meant that if anything made us feel stupid we immediately shut down and gave up before risking further failure.

My school had such an awful reputation among the local driving school community that some instructors refused to take us on. Because, if you’re the sort of girl who weeps with shame when your Thomas Hardy essay gets a B+, you’re not sufficiently well adjusted to deal with the strange humiliation that is accidentally turning the windscreen wipers on when you try to mirror-signal-manoeuvre – a learner driver right of passage.

When, against his better judgment, my instructor put me forward for my first test, I was irrationally optimistic. Yes, I was bad at driving, but I was great at tests! Sure, I’d almost had a collision with a parked car when I was reversing around a corner; admittedly it sometimes took up most of my hour-long lesson to work up the courage to drive on to a roundabout; but my 17 years of life had taught me that the more anxious I got the higher my grades became, so according to my anxiety levels, I was going to ace it!

After the first five minutes I knew I’d failed, thanks to a turn in the road that looked as though it had been choreographed by the Three Stooges. I collected a cricket score of minor faults and then, on my return to the test centre, I bashed the kerb like someone operating a dodgem.

“You did not pass,” said the instructor, sounding a little bit like Gandalf – but with severe motion sickness. I’d failed. I’d never failed at anything before. I wasn’t perfect. I’d let myself down, and badly. I dedicated a dark five minutes to taking deep breaths and trying not to cry. I was ashamed. I was devastated. And then ... strangely ... I was relieved.

I’d spent my short life desperately trying to outrun and outsmart failure. I thought that as long as I punished myself with a lack of self-belief, the universe would keep proving me wrong. That was my failsafe strategy, and it hadn’t worked. Strangely, my high standards and extreme anxiety weren’t inspiring me to get better – they were holding me back from working through problems and reaching my true potential.

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My real failure wasn’t not passing my test, it was hating and resenting my lessons, and not being prepared to be bad in order to get better. The worst thing that I could possibly imagine had just happened – I had signed and dated proof that I wasn’t a good driver – but it didn’t mean that I wasn’t a good enough human. Knowing I had room to improve made me realise that I had room to breathe, too.

The path of progress is paved with first times – first kisses, first dates, first days of university, first jobs and, yes, even first failures. But failure isn’t a permanent state of disgrace, it’s a call to evolve, practise patience, overcome adversity and celebrate the fact that life isn’t necessarily about getting to your final destination as fast as you can.

Every success I’ve experienced is a result of something I learned that first time I failed my driving test. My first failure was a lesson in humility, resilience, and in really getting to grips with the mechanics of windscreen wipers, and led to something money can’t buy – truly believing in myself for the very first time.

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