Not Epic Failure (just search that term on youtube and you realize how many people want to forget certain events happened)- but instructive failure.
Often times the word failure simply implies that we have gained nothing, yet I think people fail - pun intended- to remember that we learn most often from our mistakes. I'm thinking of "Batman Begins" quotes here:
Alfred: Why do we fall Master Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up again.
You can say it in a million different ways- everything from getting up on a horse to looking for more fish in the sea but the bottom line remains the same: you try again. And often you try harder then you did before, and you remember that failure or that mistake and correct it the next time around, until at last you have success.
I talked about this a little bit in class and Amy has posted about this in her blog- but I think portfolio's should also include instructive failures. Too often I only save the good papers, the A plus works. What about that C- I was so angry about Sophomore year that it drove me to confront the teacher? He radically changed my writing style and I am eternally grateful for it, and it was all because of that C- (which was deserving cause that essay was really awful I just wouldn't admit it). In many ways I can point to that paper as a more important milestone, as something meaningful to me, as a piece of an essential portoflio.
We have to remember to look at the bad, along with the good, to learn anything at all.
Alex Rummelhart
I totally agree with you on this. I've always believed that no one should have regrets - those regrets are part of what made you who you are, so why should you be ashamed of them? And my philosophy transfers to my writing - I'm proud of my mistakes, and I'll be glad to show them off in my portfolio.
ReplyDeleteIt can be very intimidating admitting that you have failed at something. I know that we, as teachers, often gloss over classroom activites that bombed--implicitly exposing our negative attitude toward failure. No one wants to be a failure, but it is necessary in any process that encourages growth.
ReplyDelete...definitely just YouTube'd "epic failures", and then I proceeded to waste an hour of my day watching them. :-) I totally agree with you in that failures MUST be put into a portfolio to really show what progress has been made.
ReplyDeleteOften times we are too willing to turn away from our failures, or our 'not-quite-successes.' I know there are times when I feel like I've gotten an undeservedly bad grade on a paper, only to blame it on the professor's unreasonable expectations. It's incredibly difficult to step back from your own work and view it with someone else's lens. Though when we do this, we ultimately become much better writers.
ReplyDeleteAMEN! This class is really redefining my ideas of failure and learning, and how they are so tightly connected.
ReplyDeleteThis is great advice. I sometimes look at my papers and shudder at the fact that some of their are so awful, and I toss them off trying to forget about them. However, you are right that we must all learn from our mistakes and reflect on them- if not, mistakes will be repeatedly made.
ReplyDelete