The week begins with the first Year 10 mock examination, and it is not long until I am called out to the girls’ toilets to extricate a student; she has stormed out of her Biology exam in a purple haze after twenty minutes of multiple guess, telling the invigilator to ‘go and do one’. Sadly the student is not entered for Anglo Saxon GCSE – her warm up for such an exam would be impressive. Biology, not so much.

The student has barricaded herself into a toilet cubicle (school leadership is all about the glamour) and is effing and jeffing her way through an impressive list of how her life is an epic failure because she cannot complete the biology paper.

I know to tread carefully and I give her time to vent so that I can choose the best words to coax her back out of the inconveniences, and – best case scenario – into the English Language mock paper taking place after lunch. As an English teacher, I am prepared to use the burnt embers of science to ignite the fiction paper that awaits; if I can just get her back into the exam hall, the rich and ambitious terminology launching from the toilet cubicle indicates that this student will score highly on the creative writing section .

The rubbish weekend weather means that I stand outside the girls’ toilets having added a couple of new films to my movie repertoire (Scrabble was also played as the rain hammered down, but right now the only storm cloud and the only triple word score will come from my student). I find myself enriched by the wisdom of Uncle Henry Skinner from ‘A Good Year’ (lovely film if you can get over the casting of Russell Crowe and his dodgy fringe as the love interest). In a flashback, we hear Uncle Henry admonishing his nephew for having a tantrum after losing a tennis match. He says:

‘You’ll come to see that a man learns nothing from winning. The act of losing, however, can elicit great wisdom. Not least of which is, uh…how much more enjoyable it is to win. It’s inevitable to lose now and again. The trick is not to make a habit of it.’

I stand there wondering whether now is the time to choreograph a little victory dance with this student. In the great scheme of things, one failed biology paper is no great loss, but it is to the girl still raging against the world from behind a closed door. Nothing worse than revising for an exam and finding you have all the right answers to all the wrong questions.

I can see neither of us are going to be going anywhere soon, and the student has told me in no uncertain terms to, ‘stop my yabbing,’ so I settle in for the long haul and reflect on the failures in my own life. I decide to list them to illicit the wisdom that was contained within.

I will try and keep it short, but some headline losses that come to mind are:

• A flat with a sea view.
  I blogged about it at the time and it felt like a brutal kick in the teeth when the vendor pulled out at the last minute, however now I realise I need outdoor space and, unless I learnt to dive from a third floor window, I was unlikely to ever win from living in a garret coastal flat.
• Team sport.
  I would probably not have discovered the gorgeous loneliness of the long distance runner if I had been judged to have team qualities and been selected for a sports team when I was at school. Same goes for yoga. I am more than happy inhabiting my own mat.
• Raffle prizes.
  My unluck has saved me a fortune in raffle tickets because, knowing that I will never win, now I do not purchase a ticket in the first place. Any small gifting now feels like the ultimate blessing. A student dropped off a family bar of Dairy Milk last week and I thought I had won the lottery.
• Upper body strength.
  I believe my pathetic lack of upper body strength means that I have – to date – combatted bingo wing creep because I have not yet given up on the goal of completing a full press up at boot camp. Yes, it is humiliating when the instructor asks when you are going to start the exercise (when you have been trying to bend your arms and take chest to floor for the last 5 minutes) but at least it makes the rest of the class look like professionals and thereby increases my popularity.
• The 3 Peak Challenge.
  I did complete all three peaks, but not in the time span that would mark this as a victory. However, having to walk slowly enough to allow everyone on the challenge to finish, gave space to discover the ‘why’ that motivated each and every one of the group up and down those three brutal inclines. I count this as a humbling loss and therefore a win.
• Scrabble.
  I have learnt that it makes others feel better if you let them win. I have also learnt that it is best not to throw a tantrum when a word salad is not rewarded on the board or to whip your phone out to research words containing ‘q’ and ‘z’.

I may not have pumped the air very frequently in my life, but even without a victory dance, Uncle Henry was correct about the acquisition of wisdom. I try not to make a habit out of losing, but my epic fails show me that if I can stay positive in a negative situation, then really I win.

I say this to my student . There is a long silence and then she decides – dramatically – to come out of the toilet cubicle. For a moment I think I may have won.

‘You and your yabbing, Miss. What a load of old bollocks. I’m off to meet my mates in the canteen. Let’s face it, who needs Biology? I might give English a go this afternoon if you promise to stop stalking me. A girl can’t even go to the toilet in peace in this place’

Suddenly I can think of a triple word score for an Anglo Saxon word. I do a little victory dance inside my head and return to my office to find that huge bar of chocolate.