The greatest class I have ever taken during my undergraduate career is Failure. I have managed to fit it into my schedule every semester and it’s cross-listed under each department of study. The class begins and ends at undisclosed times and is made readily available everywhere you go. Failure is a non-selective course, open to any and all students willing to take it. The one pre-requisite for Failure is that you’re human. In Failure, students dive deep into their personal faux pas, defeats, missteps and total losses. They explore them from various angles, eventually arriving at the realization that failures aren’t mistakes to avoid after all. Rather, failures are painful and necessary lessons guiding students to their highest potential.
I will warn you, the class is unpleasant and exponentially awkward. It is strenuous and involves the deep desire to isolate one’s being from the rest of the world. It causes many of its students to undermine all of their abilities and doubt their reason for doing just about everything. If you would like to pass Failure with flying colors and a bruised ego, you should be aware that the majority of students are failing at Failure.
Many refuse to embrace failure as necessary and inevitable. Fabulous failures are often blocked by protective mindsets and socially upheld standards. One such mindset is that, in order to be a high-achieving stud, one must maximize success and minimize perceived failure. Furthermore, when failure emerges, there is a tendency to resist, ignore or shield it under a fragile façade of perfection.
The maintenance of said façade is no easy feat and is almost impossible to disengage from. The façade is reinforced by our peers, our culture and ourselves. Even tools intended for connection, expansion and communication are turning into stages for our best non-failing fronts. If our Facebook statuses, snaps and tweets were used to showcase our realities, there would be a lot more snafus, falls, breakups and UN- edited-cropped-filtered-photos across the various newsfeeds. Perhaps if this were the case, we would all stop pouring time and energy into the maintenance of presented perfection. Better yet, we would stop comparing our realities to our peers’ well-crafted modern works of art.
The patterns we develop on social media sites can seep deep into our objective reality. That is, we are optimizing perceived success and minimizing perceived failures. Our presented selves only share a fraction of our complex, layered and multi-faceted existences. When we do decide to lift the façade, if only for a brief moment, it is made available for only a select few. Those we trust will not use our failures as weapons against our fragile facades of perfection.
My personal reasons for avoiding failure always seem to fall under one of three fear categories. 1. The fear of not getting what I truly desire 2. The fear of how my actions will affect others’ opinions and treatment of me. 3. The fear that failing will affect future me.
These fears keep me living comfortably under a facade of consistent good, even great at times. Too often, though, it is at the expense of my vibrant sparkle. This sparkle side is extremely failure-prone; it is unstructured, messy and vivacious. Running with this side has led me to my most epic findings. With that, I think the fear of failure is extremely debilitating. It is the threshold that keeps greatness 30 feet away from epic brilliance and adventures of a lifetime.
Please allow yourself to fail among this unique concentration of brilliant minds, professors and support. Stop avoiding failure in order to keep up with your peers. Embrace your unique self and love your individualized failures. They might just manifest as your greatest achievements. My greatest failures continue to be my greatest teachers. My failures constantly teach me to align my purpose with my passion and my skills. The only failure I would consider a true failure without chance of reconciliation is regret. I would much rather say woops and learn from it than say I really should have.
It is hard to experience failure and get to your epic when you live under your façade of perfection. Stepping down from your comfortable throne means taking risks and being okay with not being okay. Google the antonyms for comfortable and you will find among them “exceptional, noteworthy, rare, valuable and superior.” Start getting uncomfortable and give yourself permission to feel like a complete disaster from time to time. From your lowest points, wherever you are in your failure journey, learn, and get going with your life. Time is limited, and there’s much to explore and experience. Please go out and fail, then get on your feet and fail again. Learn from it and fall in love with the deepest engrained lessons failure provides.
Perhaps this model is not the best to experiment with in all of your required academic courses. Rather, aggravate the static area of your life you wish to achieve epic greatness in. This could mean asking out your long-time crush on a date, breaking up with a dead-end relationship, quitting a job that kills your spirit, applying to the program you think you have no chance at, switching to a major you find passion in but know nothing about or even letting someone know your truth without fear of abandonment or blackmail. Everyone defines failure in his or her own unique language. One’s failures can manifest as another’s greatest treasures.
Failure is not fun; it is painful, and we avoid it at all costs. However, if you embrace it, learn from it and grow from its infinite lessons, it is totally worth the risk. Who knows, you might just find your epic. Trust the process, Catherine.
Catherine White is a Trinity senior. Her column runs on alternate Thursdays.
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