13 July 2021 – Great Falls, Montana. I lived here in fourth and fifth grade, and today I came back to see it all again. Not much had changed. My elementary school looked the same. I even saw the same tetherball posts that I loved once upon a time. I also saw the windows for my fourth and fifth-grade classrooms. I loved my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Eisenzimmer. She taught me how to throw pots and milk goats. She was one of the good ones. She understood how all kids didn’t learn the same, and she modified her methods for each student. Then there was my fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Davis. I swear she hated me. Once, she told me to open the window because maybe it would hit me in the head and knock some sense into me. What? I was her best student, but she hated that I was always done with my work. She thought it challenged her. Not once did she hang my papers on the board, nor did she let me hand out papers or books. Ms. Davis was the worst. She loved Wendy Higginbotham and let her do all of the things I wanted to do. Anyway, enough about my horrible fifth-grade experience. Great Falls, Montana, is home to beautiful falls on the gorgeous Missouri River. I am glad I came back here and experienced it.

While here, everywhere I looked, I saw the words “great falls,” which reminded me of the many great falls I have experienced in my life that were not as beautiful. I hide my falls and my failures. Most of us do. But thanks to Great Falls, Montana, I will share some of mine with you. Yes, I have failed. I have failed more times than I would like to admit, and many of them were great falls. Some were not a big deal. I was a great clarinet player in middle school, but in ninth grade, I discovered that I sucked! Instead of letting everyone know I was a failure, I turned it into a joke. I made the band a social club instead of a class. The fact that I sucked brought down my high school GPA but I molded the situation to make everyone think I didn’t care. And, I had fun in the process.

When I went to college, I really wanted to be a social worker. It was all I had thought of for years. My first sociology class was practically impossible for me. I just couldn’t get it. By the grace of a very compassionate professor, I got a C- but I actually failed the class. This failure forced me to give up my dream of being a social worker. Instead of doing what I really felt passionate about, I went to math and computer science, something I was good at but didn’t really care about. Then, in the last semester of my senior year, I had to take a course on basic assembly language. All I had to do was program a checkers game. Just like sociology, I couldn’t get it. I don’t know why. It wasn’t hard. It was just different. I straight-up failed that class! Fortunately, I had another understanding professor who knew I needed to pass the class to graduate. He gave me a C-. These were the only two classes I didn’t ace in college, and I outright failed them!

When I was a senior in high school I did something completely outside of my comfort zone. I told no one except the people I had to tell because they were involved. My high school held the annual Miss Tabb High pageant. Two of the winners of this pageant actually went on to be Miss Virginia and one was the runner-up to Miss America. This high school pageant was a chance for the young women of Tabb High to gain some recognition and earn scholarship money. I decided I might as well give it a try. The pageant was three parts, talent, interview and appearance. I was definitely not even close to pretty, I was not exciting nor did I like to speak in public, and most importantly, I had zero talent. They had a preliminary pageant without an audience. We just had to do our talent. I did a reenacted Marie Antoinette’s Monologue: Struggle of a Fallen Queen. It was dreadful and I failed big – but I tried. No one knew I did this, not even my family.

These experiences taught me two things. One, I had to do a better job of hiding my weaknesses and two, I had to avoid doing things that I might not be good at. Throughout my life, I have been put in many positions where failure was likely but I didn’t have a choice but to try. At work, no matter my position or where I was in my career, I have often been in situations where I had to work much harder because I was not able to work smarter. I can’t even name the number of times something was put on my desk that I not only didn’t know how to do but I didn’t know how to even start. Fear of failure and a bigger fear of someone knowing I was a failure forced me to work harder and learn faster. I have always feared that someone would notice that I was actually incompetent.

Then there was marriage. Like most wives, I wanted to be a good one. I wasn’t. I was impatient and grouchy. I was condescending and critical. Over the years I got better, I think, but for most of my marriage, I was a terrible wife. A true failure. I spent much of my marriage with my husband holding back his anger and frustration because he was a much better person than me. I failed as a wife and I was lucky Dave was forgiving and patient and kind. One of my great falls.

I am finally learning that it is okay to not be the smartest person in the room. I try to focus on not only the successes of others but on every little thing that others do. I don’t want anyone to ever think they are less than enough. Great falls can happen to me but I don’t want them to happen to others.