Embrace Mistakes

Yes, you read that right. In this installment of The Dreaded Grade series, I am encouraging you to embrace the idea, and the reality, of making mistakes. Some of you are freaking out right now, as you read these words, which are anathema for high achievers, I know! Still… embrace your missteps. You may as well become accustomed to the fact that you are going to make them, but I am not creating this blog post simply because we are all human and thus, by definition, all of us err. Rather, I am encouraging you to embrace errors precisely because mistakes are valuable.

Furthermore, I don’t mean just the little mistakes, like getting the answer to exam question #14 wrong, even though you know you studied that stuff. (But I hope you will learn to let that little stuff go, especially during a global pandemic, when the tiny little things are just not worth getting into a tizzy over, by comparison. Please give yourself a break, Dear Reader). What I mean to say is, go ahead and embrace the colossal, whomping, big fat failures. The kind of screw ups that embarrass us, or cause us to question what we are about. Why? Because failure is instructional.

Take my experience as a graduate student, for example. One quarter, I signed up for five grad courses, officially over the recommended limit for one term. It was a mistake, because I got sick at the end of the quarter and was unable to complete the final requirements for one of the classes. I ended up taking an Incomplete, which I was unable to finish the next term because I also had a full schedule. As a result, I now have an “F” on my grad school transcript. I was initially mortified by my failure, but have come to regard it as a meaningful, transformational experience, because that error in judgment caused me to commit to myself to never “bite off more than I can chew.” That’s a lesson well learned.

Mistakes provide us with cautionary tales for future behavior, but they also invite us to wonder about and visualize different ways of going about things. Embracing failure allows us to embrace the power of the imagination. The imagination offers us new ways to move forward, both personally and intellectually. Therefore, it is imperative to learn to accept failure as a normal, and even as a welcome part, of your whole educational process, as well as your life.

Great, in theory. What does that mean in practice?

Consider each mistake an iteration. A sample effort. Well, hmmm, that clearly did not work, so how about if I do this instead? As a student, take a leaf out of the book of many successful leaders and companies, which have discovered the fiscal and societal benefits of leaning into the process of trial and error. Research also identifies the willingness to embrace failure as a standard practice employed by scientists and artists. So allow yourself to experiment, explore, ponder, try, fail, experiment some more. Do it all over again. Trial and error. That’s precisely how people discover new patterns and possibilities, create, figure out what works, make changes, and get things done! It’s also how we learn.

As a student, be gentle with yourself. Recognize that you will not get everything right the first time out of the gate, academically or personally. You will make mistakes, as you figure out how things work and feel your way along in this life. Honor that process. Allow yourself to mess up on occasion, brilliantly and boldly, and then to learn from it. That’s the key, like in my own example above, to demonstrate that you can change and grow, as a result of learning from your mistakes.