To fail is human - let's share and learn from it

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Behind every success there are lots of failures. Papers that never got published, projects that didn't get funded, courses that flopped, examinations failed, opportunities missed and so on. It happens to everyone but is seldom talked about or analysed. The success cult promoted on sites like LinkedIn shows a steady stream of successful people doing great things (more often than not "awesome"). Rather than being inspired I have often been a bit depressed when scrolling through all the success stories. It's a similar feeling at conferences which are also celebrations of success. I don't mean that we shouldn't celebrate success, but there are also lessons to be learned from less successful activities, since we can all relate to them. We may not feel we have ever reached the successful heights of the best practice cases but we can all identify with schemes that didn't win any silverware. But it's so hard to get people to share those experiences - it takes courage to admit your failures. But we could learn a lot by sharing these examples and discussing how we could improve. Most importantly hearing that even the most respected educators have failed many times in the careers.

This is the gist of a nice article by Tracy Nevatte in Times Higher Education, Lead by example and share your failures. She calls on senior academics to share their failures and how they contributed to later success. Many young researchers and teachers despair at repeated rejections and wonder if they are really cut out for a career in education and an opportunity to be rassured that everyone has felt like that at some point can be more inspiring than listening to stories of constant success.

We rarely see senior academics share their failures, either with each other or with those at the start of their careers, but their career trajectory is undoubtedly full of them. Do they not share these stories because they’re ashamed or, rather, do they not see them as failures in the first place? The latter seems more likely. Only when we normalise failure, and take the isolating power of it away, can failures equal success. But it’s going to take effort from early career researchers, research leaders, institutions and funders to get there.

There are indeed failure conferences, sharing experience and discussing how to improve. See Failcon for example. I've never managed to attend one but wish I had been able to. It's not easy, however, to attract speakers who are willing to talk about their less successful ventures and you certainly don't get any career points for doing so. Being a keynote speaker at a failure conference would not be something to post on LinkedIn. But we need to remove the shame and stigma and dare to share. Realising the even the top practitioners have a long string of flops behind them can reassure many who feel like giving up. By opening up like this and discussing our shortcomings we can also move away from the toxic overworking culture that has so often been spread on social media with people bragging about the unfeasibly long hours they spend working on their projects, papers, course design and project applications.

This post was written without any contribution from AI. I wonder if AI can discuss its own vulnerability ...