Making Mistakes isn't always a Bad Thing

I used to think that making mistakes in life was a bad thing, but the truth is, every time someone makes a mistake you gain more maturity and experience, and it just makes you a better person. I believe that you have to make mistakes in life, because you not only learn from them, but you make better decisions towards the future. I have made many mistakes in my past, but now that I know what mistakes I have made, I look at it as a positive, and think about how the mistakes I have made in my past can change my future.
When I was in 6th grade, I was in science class and we were taking a vocabulary test. I didn’t study and I had a substitute teacher. There was a smart kid sitting next to me, so I decided that I was just going to copy off of them, get a good grade and just study the vocabulary words later. I wasn’t going to get caught so I figured, hey why not? Well I did get caught, and the substitute teacher told my science teacher, and I was in trouble. I knew what I did was wrong, and I knew that not only because I got caught, but because cheating is not a good thing to do. I learned from my mistake, and I have not cheated on a test or anything else since. Making that mistake has changed the way I go through life. I take my tests on my own, and whether I pass or fail, I always know that it was my work and I tried the best that I could.
Not only can we learn from our own mistakes, but we can learn from others mistakes as well. When I took Drivers Ed class my junior year, a woman came in to talk about what happened to her when she was drinking and driving. She had killed her best friend that was in the car with her. It started out as just a fun night going out with a friend, and ended as a tragedy. She got really emotional, and listening to her speak about her situation, and the mistake that she made, changed my life. After hearing about her mistake that she made, has prevented me from ever making that same mistake. I will never drink and drive because seeing the pain that she was in made me really think.
When I think about mistakes in life, I not only think about the mistakes I’ve made, or that other people have made but I also think about the mistakes our country has made in the past. Every history teacher I know, always says, “If you don’t learn what happened in the past then history is bound to repeat itself.” But it is very true, I mean think about all the horrible things that have happened throughout history; Slavery, the Great Depression, and many other things. Every single one of these events in history is terrible but we can’t change what happened, we can only learn from it. Slavery is terrible, and it’s horrible that people had to go through that, but now African Americans have rights and it is such a great thing. We learned that slavery was wrong, and now in our future, there is not nearly as much as there used to be and people have more freedom. The Great Depression was terrible too, but now hopefully after seeing what happened, people can learn from that, and invest there money into something much more productive. Now that we have made mistakes in our history in the past, we can finally look towards the greater good of the future.
Learning from your mistakes is a good thing in life. Some mistakes might be a simple little mistake like cheating on a test. Some mistakes might be a tragedy like drinking and driving and killing your best friend. Some might even be mistakes made throughout history, but whatever the mistake is, we will always learn from them, and in the future make better decisions as a person, as a friend, and as a country.