Don't let failures get you down!

Don't let failures get you down!

A lesson in self-confidence from Nobel laureate Maungi Pawendi.

Can you believe the news that the 2023 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Maungi Baventi failed in Chemistry in his first semester exam? That defeat must have affected him greatly. But he made sure not to let that defeat overwhelm him. That is why today he has risen to the level of winning the Nobel Prize in the field of chemistry in which he failed the exam.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year for the discovery and synthesis of microscopic quantum dots.

62 year old Moungi Baventi is of Tunisian and French heritage. He has studied science subjects with ease till his schooling. But in 1970, after finishing school and joining Harvard University, a sudden apprehension gripped him.

At that time he did not study for the exams and was intimidated by such a big college and professors.

This is how he recalls the experience of writing his first exam at Harvard University.

“I still remember writing the first chemistry exam. Looking at the first question.. I don't know the answer. Looking at the second question.. Same situation. There was no answer to that either. Finally I scored 20 marks out of 100 in that exam and was known as the last student in the class.

That's what I thought, oh my god, my story is over, what am I going to do here?”

But after that failure, everything that happened in Paventy's life was a miracle of perseverance and self confidence. Paventy then learned to love chemistry and the art of preparing for exams. He had immediately set about fixing himself up.

He learned how to read. He didn't know about it until then. After learning it he scored 100 out of 100 in all the exams he wrote.

This is the message of the Nobel Prize winning chemist Poventi to the youth, “Don't give up perseverance. And don't let any failure destroy you. Because it was my first failure. It would have overwhelmed me. But I didn't give up.”

So don't let any failure overwhelm you. Recover from failure through effort. Come out of failures thinking about what to do, how to do it, and what change to make. Learn from failures and achieve success.

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