Celebrating Failure

Personally, I can recall a lot of my failures in life a lot more than my successes. I can recall my first experience presenting a seminar in my undergrad where I lost my train of thought throughout the presentation multiple times and skipped over critical information. I left the class feeling discouraged and doubted my abilities. The intensity of the failure made it memorable and the next time I presented, I made sure to work on the criticism I received and improved.

Luckily, I passed the next seminar presentation I gave in class and I was relieved. I had a celebratory dinner with friends and enjoyed my victory. And that's about all I remember from that presentation. When I had to present once again in my last year of my undergrad, I sat down and prepared for my next big challenge, my thesis presentation. I took a moment to reflect on my last presentation, which went quite well. However, there wasn't much to guide me there. Instead, I was constantly remembering my issues from the first attempt and that was the guiding force for my efforts. 

Fortunately, I succeeded in my capstone presentation and got my degree! From then on, I viewed my failure as one of the most vital things I have learned during my undergraduate. The emotions I felt post-failure left a strong, lasting memory that lets me think critically on how much effort is required for me to succeed. 

This also helped me understand that failure wasn't the end of the world. As I learned when preparing for my seminar a few weeks ago, this was me exercising a growth mindset. Dweck's theories rang super true for my experiences and helped me understand that resilience and continued effort trumps innate skills. My failure wasn't a sign of being not good enough but rather a sign of room to improve and a chance to see real growth.

As a future educator, this insight has shaped how I think about failure and assessments. By allowing a student to stumble and fail in a safe, supportive environment, they create their own memorable lessons. They carry forward an understanding of what went wrong and with proper criticism, can learn how to improve and reach success.

Courtesy of BraydenS@OTU