Posts Tagged ‘college’

I’ve been lurking on the Carnival of Journalism for a while now. Every month I told myself I’d write the next month. I finally got around to it for this month’s topic: Failure.

A failure in your life (personal or professional) that has lessons. It must be your failure and you must take responsibility. But this will be a safe space to discuss our failings and what we can learn from them.

I decided to write about this because I don’t fail.

What I mean is that I’ve developed a sense of optimism and resiliency that forces me to see the upside of a crappy situation and move forward. I fail every day — spill coffee on my shirt, forget to ask a key question in an interview, leave an important detail out of my story. But I frame the situations positively — I needed to get rid of that old shirt, I can ask the question again and write another story, I’ve got a blog post ready for the next day.

I don’t know where I get this from. A first child thing? Pressure from my parents to always do better? Too stubborn to admit failure?

I stopped moving for a few failures, and the one that sticks out the most happened during my first year in college.

I decided to fill my science requirements by concentrating in “brain and cognitive sciences.” It sounded smart and cool, which I thought I was — I won a big-money scholarship, achieved a 4.0 GPA first semester, edited the features section at the student newspaper as a freshman.

I signed up for Foundations of Cognitive Science — perception, language, memory — anxious to have my mind blown.

After a few weeks, the only thing blown was my GPA.

Reading for my three literature classes took priority over the obscure sciency text so I had no clue what was going on during the lectures. Not that it mattered — the class was held the mornings after production nights. If we put the paper to bed on time at 7 a.m., I could fit a two-hour nap in before class. If.

Final grades were determined by two out of three tests. If you did well enough on the first two, you didn’t have to take the last one during finals week. I bombed the first test and picked up the studying. But I was too far behind, and I bombed the second test. I calculated my odds of getting anything better than a C on the last test (which I needed to get a C in the class) were as good as winning the lottery and using the money to travel to the moon (this was soon after pop star Lance Bass announced his mission to outer space.)

My academic adviser told me I had two options: Fail or withdraw. Had I visited her a week later, I would have missed the withdrawal deadline and been forced to take a D on my shiny transcript.

My hand shook so much while filling out the paperwork that I had to start over. I cried in the adviser’s cubicle.

“I fail at waterskiing and playing video games against my brother,” I said. “I don’t fail at school.”

“But you didn’t fail,” she said. “You withdrew. You got out and are going in another direction.”

Lesson learned: It’s not failing to change midcourse, make a plan, move forward. Also, it’s better to seek help at the first sign of trouble — not when the ship is halfway (or two-thirds of a semester) to the bottom of the ocean.

Impending failures can be turned around and I look for them as I work on daily stories, investigative projects and redecorating my apartment. I persist through failures as best I can, and when I’ve flat on my face failed and there’s no way to fix it, I document the failure (journal, post-it on my desk) and start over.

I did this last night with this post. I saved the “failed” part in a file on my computer, a small reminder that it’s OK and even productive to fail.

Making and using a Plan B might not be called “withdrawal” in the real world, but it’s not failure either.

Last time I floated the North Platte with Carol, our floats stopped floating. The old-school innertubes deflated about an hour into the trip, and we ended up walking a mile through neighborhoods and on the bike path back to the car.

We made sure this time not to repeat our prior experience. We rented a raft. With oars.

The yacht seated 12 (we were 6) and included a cooler to hold beverages, snacks and dry clothes. The heavy-duty sides protected us the few times we bumped into cement bridge supports.

I got to row!

We floated about six miles down the river, which included the whitewater adventure park.

Rapids!

The last time I rowed anything was November 2003, before the fall crew season ended and the Genesee River froze over. I liked rowing but didn’t like how cliquey the team was. It was college — time to branch out and meet all sorts of people. And I joined the newspaper, which cut into 5:30 a.m. practice on the morning the paper came out. Although I stopped in between seasons, I still consider it the only commitment I’ve ever quit.

“Rowing” the  raft made me remember why I used to like it. Rowing is hard work that looks easy when it’s done well. I loved getting into a rhythm — slipping the blade in the water just enough, reaching forward and pulling with one clean swoop to glide across the water — and repeating it 2,000 meters at a time.

Last weekend’s outting can hardly be compared to competitive rowing, but it was a little reminder that it’s something I could return to someday.