“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
– Samuel Beckett
Every student knows the nerve-wracking experience of failure. Whether we have failed in a biodiversity class, or we think we are going to fail a report on organic chemistry, failure keeps us from moving. Science is all about action, and when we are confronted with potential failure, we tend to remain in a passive, immobile state. Professor Dawn Bazely asks us in simple terms “to let ourselves fail”. The best way to develop self-reliance and bolster your confidence is to stare at the ocean of failure and let ourselves jump off the cliff. She how failure can teach us more about ourselves than successes can. We are defined by our ability to fail, heed good advice, and try again.
I am reminded of Samuel Beckett’s quote that echoes a similar sentiment. In order to accomplish something worthwhile, we must allow room for mistakes and errors and failures. Get up and try again tomorrow. If I were to advise my fellow peers, I would definitely advise everyone to engage with the material you are learning and become passionate about it. By engaging with the material and becoming passionate we can then affect positive change in the world. We certainly need to go from passive science textbook reading to active applications of research and knowledge in the public sphere. However, once again the fear of failure can keep us from speaking up and reaching out. What if we don’t do a good job? What are our plans fail? Here again, failure is holding us back from delivering actionable scientific knowledge.
In my first semester at York University, I failed my math course. A bright red “F” on my transcript. Were it not for my fellow science students and the Science Academic Advising office on campus I would have been too scared to fail another math class or continue in my biology degree, yet, I persisted. I took another math course, devoted more time to learning limits and derivatives, asked my professor questions after class, and ended up with an A. Later, I took a statistics course, and enjoyed it immensely. Who knew I would find math fun? Were it not for failing math in the first year, I would have thought I would never be able to do math. Therefore, I wholeheartedly agree with Professor Bazely’s advice – Failure does indeed make us stronger, not weaker. We must see failure as a normal part of life rather than an anomaly or something to be feared.
What have you been procrastinating on? What task or lab report is making you nervous to finish? Is it because you are afraid to fail? Take this as permission to fail! Go ahead and fail! And enrich your learning experience all the more for failing.
References:
Episode 174: Dr. Dawn Bazely: Investigating the Intriguing Interactions between Animals and Plants (Oct 31, 2014). People Behind the Science Podcast.
Time Stamp: 01:01:13
Duration: 01:01:13 to 01:02:01 (48 seconds)
Link to the Podcast:
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 