In the spirit of having just finished marking my university students’ first of three assessments, this blog seemed fitting. When I first started as an academic, everyone warned me that marking is one of the worst parts. You spend your evenings, weekends, and what feels like half your year grading things, and then once you release these grades back into the wild the other half of the year is spent dealing with disgruntled emails opposing said grades. What they don’t mention is, marking is often something you can do anywhere! In the ‘good ol days’ of hand-written assignments, I’d load up those boxes of chicken scratch, find myself a beautiful beach, and return many a submission with grains of sand sprinkled between the pages. As we moved to digital submissions for many things, after learning the hard way laptop keyboards and sand aren’t friends, I discovered the cafes that won’t kick you out after an hour and parks with comfy grass and minimal biting ant or screaming children life make a delightful marking office as well. Not sure what my colleagues are on about, but marking is one of my highlights!
Now that we’ve set the scene about the importance of perspective (see, there was a point), let us chat about a word that instils anxiety and fear in far too many students, and people in general: FAILURE. Firstly, I was hoping using ‘Gothic’ font would help make that a bit more chilling, looked better in my head than in Word unfortunately. Anyway, it is almost inevitable some students will fail an assessment, and also that all of us (yes reader even you!) will fail at hopefully multiple things throughout our life. Failing at least means you have tried…maybe not very hard or well, or maybe it was your all and just not in the right direction or way (side note, technically students can fail by not submitting something at all, but I classify that as a ‘null submission’ so its not relevant to this rambling!).
When we fail something at school, we’re most likely given feedback and encouraged to reflect on what we could have done differently, and hopefully what we can change in approaching the next assessment. Heck, we might even get some tutoring, personal extra chats with the teacher, or if we’re lucky a resubmission attempt! Noooot always the case when we fail at something in the ‘real world’ though (gag whoever started the notion that university isn’t part of the real world…as much as it often feels like I’m in a movie with the strange things that happen). I mean, we might have those super ‘helpful’ friends or family members who are VERY ready to give us feedback, potentially in the form of ‘I told you so.’ We’ll also have the other kind of ‘helpful’ friends or fam (guilty at being this person…) who shower us with unwelcome optimism about how ‘it wasn’t meant to be’ but we’ll get it the next time or find something else just as great! JUST LET ME EAT CHOCOLATE AND FEEL SORRY FOR MYSELF IN PEACE PEOPLE.
Either way, what comes next is our move. I mean, I’m not saying retreating to a cave for a few days with baked goods and self-pity isn’t okay in some situations. However, it’s also unlikely to serve much purpose beyond possibly having us end up in the news as a potential yeti spotting or something (I’ve got the hair for it). Failure can leave us disheartened, disappointed in ourselves, angry, unmotivated, and a range of other less than enjoyable emotions. One of my shining examples was very confidently going for promotion last year at work (after taking a demotion to get the job in the first place, I knew I was a shoe-in)…and then being denied. Ouuuuuuch. While I did have a little rant to the dogs for a few days (my partner during that time was smart and learned to just smile, nod, and where possible schedule volleyball coaching), I then realised that wasn’t really getting me anywhere. Funny that. Serendipitously, I’d also just started a research project around self-compassion. Damn. Guess I can’t keep being hard on myself either.
Instead, it was time to pick myself up by my invisible bootstraps (I hardly wear shoes, nevermind boots), realise this was an opportunity to reexamine the situation, and make a decision: keep seeing myself as a failure, or instead reflect on how my approach was the fail and consider options. I recommend the second one, its way more fun for everyone, including yourself, and life’s got enough challenges as it is without us making it tougher being mean to ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, failing sucks. Whether it’s something we worked towards for hours, months, or years, its hard for it not to hurt somehow, or to take personal. And yes, it may very well be 110% your fault, but it’s also 110% your opportunity to view it as a learning and life experience (once that cave time and baked good wallowing is finished). Failure lets us work out what doesn’t work, just like succeeding lets us work out what does. It’s then up to us to experiment with other approaches or even change direction all together…or heaven forbid maybe even ask for help. While there’s a quote attributed to Julian Michaels that, “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough” that isn’t always the case. Maybe we’re just not trying the right way, or trying for the right outcome. Time to get out there, screw up, learn something, and enjoy the messiness of life. And if all else fails, there’s always a cave and brownies.
Salt + Soul Adventures 