Failure

I might have called this chapter “Misery”, or “Despair”, I suppose, but time has softened my memories of failure. That is not quite right, because I feel I am always courting disaster. Perhaps failure has left me inured, calloused, or jaded. Fail fast, fail forward, fail often: that is the mantra de jour. It is true that a project with little investment can fail without fanfare or fundamental readjustment, and that it can even teach you a lot. I do not seem to work that way however. I am slow to formulate and articulate intentions, slow to make decisions, and slow to build momentum. When I finally do commit to something, it is not tentative or provisional but with every resource at my disposal. Failure absolutely wrecks me.

Consider:
Do you have any insight into how your students experience failure?
Do you protect them from failure, or allow it to teach them something?

I went to Cornell University School of Engineering once, a disaster that got me ejected. It took me 15 years and 3 colleges to get my degree in architecture. I went for a bike ride once, and ended up wet, alone and in complete despair, in an icy snowstorm, on the empty and exposed high plains of Spain. I wanted to see Africa. I took a job in Boston once, and managed to cost my employer…a lot of money. My first marriage ended in disaster. I spent a year in the Amazon Jungle and got carried out on a stretcher. I spent years renovating a condominium once, and ended up paying the bank $20,000 to end the agony. I started renovating my current house 15 years ago, and still the project is incomplete. I spent two years writing a novel, and finally put it out of its misery on a thumb drive somewhere. I wrote another book once, and it sold 22 copies.

Why rehash this ridiculous history? I can look at all of my half-baked or half-finished schemes and projects, and all of the adventures and misadventures that have defined my life, and I can derive this singular satisfaction: not that I am a success, but that I have lived. I have not postponed or compromised this astonishingly short existence for some future reward. In whatever limited way that I could, I have committed myself to adventure.

Consider:
Do you engage your students in visions of their future?
Do you engage your students in defining a life well-lived?

I was alone (again!) in the Sahara Desert once, the isolation affecting me badly, when a friend emailed to blast a bitter blog post (Krabbendam, 2007). In his words, after all, I was just on vacation. He could not equate my sadness, frustration and loneliness with real suffering, and felt it all a bit unbecoming. It took me a long time to process that accusation. Was this just a vacation, or was this in any way an authentic adventure? Did it matter that I had made up this trip out of thin air, crossing the Sahara by bicycle, and that there was no true impetus or justification except my own middle-class ennui? Was it in the end a failure that the country of Algeria refused to let me bicycle freely for fear of my kidnapping or demise, and that I crossed a good chunk of the desert in a truck?

What finally, is failure?

I have found that it is never absolute. I did not finish my Sahara travels with a giddy sense of triumph, but I look back with the satisfaction of having done it at all. It was no vacation (at least, it didn’t feel like one), because it required a year of planning (however imperfect), involved authentic risk, lacked any insulation from real life, and had an open-ended character that required me to be flexible and resilient. Some measure of pride or satisfaction does not feel out of place. It was very different from what I had imagined, this adventure, but it was not a failure in any dramatic sense. I met the most amazing people, and feel expanded by the adventure, not scarred.

That cold wet day in Spain when I was 19? I found an unlocked barn, in which sat an unlocked car, and managed to sleep warm and dry in the back seat. I reached Granada the next day, riding through the snow past wrecked cars and over a closed pass, and by pure coincidence met two guys from my hometown in the United States who bought me a meal, showed me the Alhambra, and a few weeks later could reassure my parents that I was doing just fine. I did make it to Africa, spent three months riding my bike around Morocco and then rode all the way back to Amsterdam. I feel expanded by the adventure, not scarred.

Consider:
How do you feel about trophies for participation?
Is the honor and satisfaction to be found in the effort or only in the result?

I cannot say the same for every disaster I have brought upon myself. That condominium renovation left me broke, my first marriage left me broken, and the damage I did to my employer left me unemployed. The self-flagellation is a distant memory however, and I carry the scars as a quiet reminder. I manage my relationships better, take more care with my work, and endure the latest house renovation with greater fortitude because of those disasters.

Consider:
Do you help your students come to grips with the ups and downs of life by sharing your own failures, what ultimately came of them (and you), and what you learned?

Here’s an idea that I believe will serve students better than merely exalting success. Share stories of your real life, the more ridiculous and disastrous the better. Your students will come to a better acceptance and appreciation of themselves, ragged edges and all. I spent a year on a bicycle in Europe and Africa when I was 19 because I flunked out of Engineering school. That feels in retrospect like a gift, not a failure.

References

Krabbendam, R. (2007). Harmattan, a travel blog. [blog] http://blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=396

Your thoughts on this journal post are highly valued, as I continue to build and refine my perspective on schools and the school environment. Please share your own experiences and perceptions of the school environment below!