Post Gazette: "Disgraced ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair talking to college students about ethics? What's next? The former head of Lehman Brothers on financial risk management?
Such was the blogosphere's snarky tone when Washington & Lee University in Virginia announced that Mr. Blair was to speak Friday at a journalism conference there."
26 comments:
It's definitely a lot easier to tell people what NOT to do than what to do to become successful. There's also something to say about hearing from someone who has experienced great success as well as great failure. When you listen to a speaker who reached success despite obstacles but never actually failed, you don't get a completely well-rounded view of what life can be like after education.
Its quite clear that no matter how hard we try to avoid failure its going to happen at some point - probably multiple times. Especially in the world of theater - there's bound to be plenty of designs or constructions or performances that grandly fail by massive proportions. What matters is to remember that failing is not the end of the world. I'm sure all of our professors have done poor work on productions, but they never let that define their career. They kept working and getting better. Failure is inevitable, you just have to ready to get over it and move forward.
What an idea. I would very much like a class on how to fail. I think so many students get caught up in always having to succeed and do everything right, but if there was actually a class where we were doomed to fail, and forced to get used to that, I think it would make us much better at succeeding. It would be really great if there was also a much better critique process, helping us when we fail as well as how to get better.
I really like the first comment. It's true, typically when people are describing their path to success and tips for others, they are extremely vague. It's no one's fault, because usually success isn't definable. So I think telling people what not to do would be far more depressing, but it's pretty effective. The week before my graduation, my school brought in a mother of a girl convicted for drunk driving and sentenced to five years, and it was pretty effective. Initially I thought it would be too depressing, but my school actually had a habit of bringing in speakers who had failed many times...and I certainly never forgot them.
What most people don't realize is that we fail on a daily basis. We will forget to mail our bills, call back our parents, or even just wake up to our alarm clock. When these little and insignificant tasks are not meet we don't break down. When people fail on a grand scale they act as if it is the first time. People should take a lesson from everyday life and remember that they are not perfect.
This seems like a pretty good course. There should be more courses like this, kind of how we have the "meta-skills" lectures. In understanding the failures of another, that puts a more objective view on failure which makes it more understandable and makes students more likely to avoid failure. It's also important in terms of the mental health of the students: when you lose, don't lose the lesson.
Failure is inevitable and refusing to prepare oneself for the possibility is poor planning. Once a person falls flat on their face then picks themself and keeps on going forward, they become stronger and less afraid to take big risks. If one is constantly concerned about failure, they will make safe choices and never take big enough risks to actually say something worthwhile and interesting to an audience, be it the world. Learning to cope with failure and remove its negative connotation from the public sphere would allow room for more creativity and intriguing work. What a wonderful article. We need more of these in the media.
It's great that Gen Y wants to learn about failure. It is so true that Gen Y has been protected from failure for all of their lives. The idea that everyone is a winner or is successful all the time needs to be broken at some point. Being able to see failure first hand seems like it would be a very helpful learning tool for current college students. In general learning from one's mistakes is usually more helpful than learning how to succeed.
Failure is a necessary part of education. It teaches you (sometimes the hard way) what not to do, and what tactics don't work. It's upsetting that more of our education doesn't deal with failure. Like the article mentioned, we are safe in the collegiate world. While we are protected here, we need to be put up to situations in which we will fail. If we can learn how to cope and work with failure in an educational setting, we should be more prepared when we step out into the real world.
I've always found that people seem to learn better when things go wrong rather then right. If things go as planned, then you generally don't learn much except that the plan you pulled together work, its the diagnostic and re-evaluation of a failure that seems to really teach people. The idea that there's now a demand for speakers to talk about where they screwed up is not a surprising one since it seems like everyone who ever comes and speaks at a school is some kind of super being in their field. Student's can't compare as easily or share experiences if someone has just been luck/gifted their entire life and did not ever find themselves dealing with real crushing failure.
I think a class like this would also be useful, in that one would be able to see that is is OK to fail and that one can learn from that. Something lots of our professors say to us often is to not fear failing, and to take risks now when we still can. I know plenty of people who are scared of failing, and as a result they are stubborn and unable to take the leaps now in the education that they should in order to get the most out of the 4 years here. So, even at this point in our lives, it's very important to learn to fail and to learn from these things
failure provides so much instruction. In theatre for example when I see a failure of a show i get so much more out it. The discussion is more on what didn't work, and why it didn't work. With a successful show on the other hand the discussion is never why it was good. It's harder to pick out exactly what made it work. Anyway the sheltering of Gen Y is also a horrible idea. If you make failure a shameful thing, rather than promote the idea that it is something to build upon, then many students will be discouraged and will lack the skills needed to learn from their mistakes and move on with their lives. As an educational establishment, I think universities have a responsibility to emotionally prepare students for the workforce, not just intellectually.
I don't find it necessary to specifically instruct people on failure- we all are aware that it exists and have definitely experienced it throughout our lives. Perhaps it would be useful to bring the topic into other classes, and freely discuss the concept of grand-scale failure based on the class topics, and how best to deal with/avoid it. Simply stating that failure is okay is false, and is only done to reassure people throughout their miscalculations in certain things, when what we should be doing is discussing how to learn from and prevent failure, using it as a learning tool.
this article is so pertinent to our current times considering that many students who are now graduating that have done well in school are finding themselves unemployed and seeking work, of course being unemployed and failing are two different things but it shows how sheltered students are from real life problems like failure or unemployment because theyre seen as such extreme ills when in actuality theyre something that students should experience and learn to cope with
Society today definitely under values the lessons learned from failures. In a competitive culture of today we want more success sooner so we can pack up and retire by the time we're thirty. Realistically, for most of us this in an impossibility. We'll be working well into our fifties, sixties, and perhaps even our seventies. This means we have time to fail and pick our selves back up again. World wars have come and gone in the time that most of us have before our sunny retirements will run around. There are few mistakes our careers would not have time to recover from. As the author of this article pointed out, even Greek heroes had their share of failures. For example, Ulysses encountered a spectacular number of failures over the course of the Odyssey. Working through failure is undeniably unpleasant, but by no means should we view it as insurmountable.
So much of this article of true in more ways than I'm comfortable admitting. What is it that we learn from the boring stories of well educated men and women with perfect records and high paying jobs that have never seen an obstacle to great to overcome? Nothing. Those that we learn the most from, we note their failures and ask ourselves how we could have dealt differently, hopefully leading to a change in thought process and consequential actions. Most of what I have learned, or how I have overcome butting into brick walls, came because of failure and the later ability to recognize and reassess the reason for it. Success just isn't a good teacher.
I think it's good for us to be able to learn how to fail in things and understand that, while it is hard to deal with, it is part of life, and a learning experience, which is what we are here at this university to do. We live in a society in which we are constantly pushed, and failure is seen as completely unacceptable, but we need to fail often times in order to succeed. We need to be at rock bottom occasionally so we can fully appreciate our own success. A class in which we learn how to fail, and what to take from failures I think would be something interesting and hopefully enlightening for many students
Seeing failure as well as success is all a part of education. Schools so often seem to want to bring in the biggest names and biggest success stories that the second half is often forgotten. As others have mentioned above it's unlikely that you'll meet anyone who has not failed at times, if you're not risking failure then are you really challenging yourself? And without challenging yourself are you really learning and gaining experience or are you just marking time?
People who fail big tend to have learned a lot from the experience, that's something that they can share with others to help them avoid the same mistakes, maybe by spotting the signs of trouble as they're coming up, maybe by being reminded of the consequences of questionable decisions.
Failure is an extremely important thing to learn about. Everyone faces failure at some point in their lives, and many people face failure more than they face success. If students heard more stories of failure, then they would know what mistakes not to make. Often if you hear a negative story, you are more likely to listen and be able to relate. The world isn't really about winning... it's about how you deal with failure. I remember from a very young age, my parents would tell me to never be a sore loser. Everyone needs to learn that. It is easy to forget the importance of being able to fail in a respectable way.
i definitely agree that its easier to learn what not to do. I think that having a class about failure makes failure less scary and would give at least me more confidence to be successful. It would be great to have another meta-skills class with Joe. I want to also point out that everyone does fail at one thing or another and that can lead to better things. for me, i couldn't sing or act, so i started working on shows and haven't looked back since. You cant have success without failure.
Sometimes i really wish that we hadn't been raised to try to be so perfect and successful. That has made us work hard and grow academically and intellectually, which is great, but I think a lot of people are not ready to deal with failure because of this "strive for excellence" mentality. it has caused us to fear failure, which is something i wish i was able to handle better. people need to learn how to keep going when they've made mistakes. the title of this article is right: we definitely could use a class like this.
To paraphrase Randy Pausch, what we gain from failure, is experience--which is far more useful than short term success. I'd rather hear about someone who's failed, what they've learned from it, and how they moved on, than hear from someone who's had an easy path the whole way. You don't learn anything from someone who hasn't had to work for it. It is hard to get people to talk about their failures though. No one really wants to admit that they've made some bit mistakes--but mistakes are, to me, an essential part of growing and learning. Although, I must admit, I'd rather hear about how the person got over the mistake, and worked around it, than hear someone lament over what a mess they've made.
The importance of learning failure along with success is summed up perfectly in that last paragraph. "They know how to lose." For many of us, we see loss a set back and it can throw off our confidence in a time when we really need it. I agree entirely that the next generation, maybe not ours so much, has been trained that failure is not an option because their parents have lately been protecting children to such a degree that the fear mistakes because they do not understand them. It's like a parent who pulls a kid off the soccer team when the balls hits him in the face or refuses to take them back to the playground if they fell off the swing. Yes, it happens more often than not. People need to learn to understand failure as an education and not a punishment. College students especially need to understand that failure is not the road's end but merely a hurdle that needs to be overcome. Besides, failures usually have the deeper insight on what should be done, if they actually learned their lesson, then successful people who somehow naturally had the formal to move forward. I am not saying they did not put skill into their success, but that failures have a better understand of the skills that are need.
I think that telling someone what NOT to do is a useless class. People tend to make the same mistakes as their predecessors, regardless of being warned. It's hard to take what someone says to heart when you have not had the experience to make it reality.
I think it is really hard to talk about failure if there isn't some "good" at the end of the rainbow. For example its great to talk about a prisoner who has gotten out of jail and redeemed his/her life, but to just talk about someone in prison is depressing. I agree with Jacbo that out meta skills class got close to this in spirit. And I think CMU, esp. Joe does a good job of telling people that being a perfectionist is a bad thing. I also agree that we fail on a daily basis and we shouldn't be so surprised when we fail.
Failure is just as important a part of any process as success. In trying to complete a project, finding things that do not work is just as beneficial as doing things that do work.
The key is to be able to learn from those failures. Being able to analyze what went wrong with a failure is the only way that an eventual success would be possible.
The other thing is, that especially in a theatrical setting, the definition of "success" is fluid. Thus the definition of "failure" is also as fluid. In addition, if ones goal is "success" the scope of what is possible is narrowed greatly. Any kind of "thinking outside the box" is eliminated, if you are bound with what is successful.
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