Failure showed me what I was capable of | Asha Rangappa '96

Asha Rangappa ‘96, is the Dean of Admissions at Yale Law School and a former FBI agent.. Q. Tell me about a time you failed. A. Failure has been my friend. I think failure is really important, because it helps you see what you're capable of. I don't think that it shows you your limitations; I think it shows you what you're actually capable of. I'll give one example. I got the call to report to Quantico. A week before, I was riding in the car with a friend, my boyfriend at the time, who made this quick left turn in front of an oncoming car. The oncoming car hit my passenger door. The airbag went off and I got rushed to the hospital. I had contused ribs. It was awful. I couldn't move. It put a kink in the plan in terms of my physical abilities. I was really devastated. I was able to get them to postpone my start date for another month. I didn't want to push it any more than that, because then I could just lose my slot. That was going to be my chance. I took five weeks. I was trying to run. I would just cry everyday because it was just so painful, and I had been in such good shape, and I’d been working so hard. Anyway, I showed up to Quantico. Second day you're there they give you a PT test. Running, pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups. I failed colossally. You can get negative points. If you get in the negatives total cumulatively, they’ll actually wash you out. Somehow I managed to do enough to cancel out my negative scores from not being able to do some stuff at all, that I ended up with a zero. So they let me stay there, but I was basically on probation for the first six weeks. At the FBI, they could care less that I was in a car accident. They did not want to hear my excuses. I remember that first week I was so sad. I thought I’d never be able to do it. It was a place that valued just a different set of criteria than I had been used to performing for. Also they just didn't want to hear about any mitigating factors. No safe spaces at Quantico, I can tell you that. I had this moment where I was like, “I just should quit,” and then I was like, “I’m not gonna quit.” You know it's like Project Runway, you gotta make it work. Tim Gunn, “Make it work!” So I woke up at four in the morning every single day to wrap my ribs. I could hear the Rocky music playing in the background. I just trained, I trained, I trained. I found people who could help me. This is actually how I met my husband, because he was an Air Force Academy grad who lived down the hall. I couldn't do push-ups to save my life. He started assisting me with pushups. Every day during class breaks he would sit there and put a towel around my waist and I would practice my pushups. I had to do 20 of them to get one point or something. I needed a 15-point minimum to stay. I went from zero to 20 points in the span of six weeks. Everyone was shocked, because they totally thought that I was going to fail out. It was just such a pivotal moment for me. I was either going to forge forward or I was going to quit, and I just forged forward. No one believes in you and you just have to marshal the resources that you have in yourself. You find the people around you that are going to help you and you make it work. Two months ago, I’m now 41, I ran a Spartan Race. I now know what I'm capable of, and physical challenges don't daunt me in the same way. I’ll jump through fire, I don't care. That came out of failure. If I hadn’t been in the car accident and I somehow squeaked by on the first day, I probably wouldn't have risen to the occasion as much as I ended up doing. And now I'm really good at pushups. And pull-ups actually. I don't think you can see a successful person in the world that didn't fail very spectacularly at some point. Find Ms. Rangappa’s full interview here: https://careerservices.princeton.edu/node/2321 ----------------------------------------­------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAREER & LIFE VISION CONVERSATIONS is a video series by Princeton Career Services highlighting lessons learned by inspiring Princetonians. For the whole series visit: https://careerservices.princeton.edu/node/2191 ----------------------------------------­------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Produced by Lisa Einstein '13 Music by http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music ----------------------------------------­-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------