Over the summer, I helped lead a field trip to a restored wetland for a Mashpee Wampanoag summer camp. The challenges began immediately. It was a really hot day, and the message to wear long pants and close toed shoes was not effectively passed on to the camp organizers. Welcoming a bus full of people in shorts and sandals to a site with sun and poison ivy and thorns and ticks was not ideal. Despite the challenges, the day began well enough…at least for the adults. We spent the morning as a big group, talking about wetland restoration and learning about indigenous uses for plants and Wampanoag traditions from the head counselors. The afternoon was meant to include small groups rotating between several stations before the campers would head to a local swimming hole. Engaging middle schoolers in plant-related activities right after lunch on a 90+ degree day when they don’t have appropriate clothing and are looking forward to swimming might be possible, but it was definitely not possible with the planning I had done. My attempts at getting the campers excited about the hands-on activity were mostly met with blank stares, and I don’t really blame them. It was hard to precede swimming on such a hot summer day, and I was not at my most creative in the hot weather. I certainly could have spent more time adapting the planned activity to a summer camp setting and not relied as much on the activity someone else had used in the past, but there was nothing I could do about weather or timing.
Failures – many of them – are a frequent part of graduate school. Failures can feel outsized when all the focus (in academia) is on the funding you do get, the manuscripts you do publish, and the positions you do get. I think enduring failure gets easier as you face more of them. There may be no substitute for actual experience but knowing that even the most “successful” people have a long list of failures can be useful. In 2010, Melanie Stefan wrote an article in Nature about creating a CV of failures, and Johannes Haushofer (Professor of Economics at Stockholm University) published the most widely seen CV of failures in 2016 when he was an Assistant Professor at Princeton. I have helped 100s of undergraduates write resumes and have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make experiences sound as impressive as possible. The CV of failures is the opposite – a recounting of academic and professional failures. The idea of sharing failures, despite the number or magnitude of your successes, is powerful. Knowing about the failures of others may never make our own sting less, but they may provide some motivation to move forward after each failure. Of course, failures are not distributed equitably, and some people and groups endure more adverse and uncontrollable circumstances than others. I think it is important learn from failures, and I hope I can recognize the components of individual failures that are out of my control while also recognizing and working to change the systemic elements of my field that make failures fall disproportionately.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
December 2022
Categories |