F is for Failure (but also for Fantastic)
No one likes to see it on their transcript. It’s the F word: Failure.
In her 2016 TED Talk Teach girls bravery, not perfection, founder of Girls Who Code Reshma Saujani calls us out on how we raise our girls to fear failure and risk.
It’s that time of the year again: midterm season. With it comes a resurgence of a crippling fear we all have: the fear of failure. For one reason or another, we have been programmed to always hold ourselves to impossible, almost superhuman standards of success and productivity (I blame capitalism). We have been conditioned to squirm at even just the thought of failing an exam or experiencing any other abstract sense of failure. And the scariest (no pun intended) part of it all, is that we do not see any problem in our aversion to failure. We have internalized the idea that failure is inherently a bad thing to the point where we do not even stop to question this perception. So, I’m here to do just that: I urge you to pause and reflect on whether failure can be a good thing. Not only that, I challenge you to start celebrating your failures just like you do your successes. Here’s why.
In what follows, I attempt to mathematically “prove” that failure = success.
Lemma 1: Failure is inevitable.
The fact of the matter is that failure is inevitable. No matter how much you think you can escape it, and no matter how many unhealthy habits (consuming insane amounts of caffeine to stay awake long enough to get your assignment in on time, sacrificing sleep to cram for next day’s midterm, procrastinating as a form of coping…) you adopt to avoid it, you can never outrun it. Let’s face it: university is TOUGH. McGill is TOUGH. CS programs are TOUGH.
But you too are tough. (OK no I would never say something cheesy like that).
You will inevitably fall behind. You will inevitably fail a midterm. You will inevitably fail at landing that internship or research position you so wanted. It’s just the way it is. It’s by design. Failure is inevitable because we take ambitious risks and try new and unfamiliar things for the very first time; we challenge ourselves beyond our current ability level and do difficult things we never did before. What happens when we try to ride a bike for the first time after having only ever ridden a tricycle? We fall flat on our faces. Or our bums. Analogously, what happens when you try to do something you haven’t done before? You fail. And that is simply because you couldn’t have possibly succeeded.
What we fail (I swear no pun intended) to realize is that failure is a necessary stepping stone to success. You cannot reach the other side if you do not go through it. It is such a natural and necessary part of the process that leads to success. I know it may not seem like that to you considering how everyone nowadays tries so hard to present themselves as perfect, accomplished people who never struggled to get to where they are or to earn that 4.0 GPA. You might think there are people who just never fail and always seem to succeed at whatever they try. But that is not reality.
When successful people look back on their time at university, they too find a journey fraught with failure, tears, sleepless nights, imposter syndrome… At that point in their lives, none of them could imagine themselves as successful people in the future. Do you see where I’m going with this? You might be struggling now to see any light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s precisely because you haven’t yet reached the end of the tunnel.
Lemma 2: The more frequently you fail, the higher the rate of approaching success, the more probable success becomes.
Now that we’re convinced that failure is inevitable (see Lemma 1), we note that failing multiple times is even better than failing once.
Each time you fail, you get infinitesimally closer to success. It goes without saying that you get considerably close to success if you fail a considerable number of times. Every time you fail you learn what does NOT work. Failing is valuable because it provides insight into what you’re doing wrong. Once you learn what does not work, you pinpoint your mistakes, work on how to rectify them, and figure out what DOES work. The best way to succeed is to fail lots and lots of times. Linus Pauling’s got my back on this one:
Now we are ready to confidently state our conclusion:
Theorem: Failure leads to success.
No like, seriously - I proved it.
Totally NOT what I just did in this blog post.
In conclusion, failure is fantastic. Viewing failure in a positive light requires a major paradigm shift. You must acknowledge that while the feeling of failure is fleetingly painful or unpleasant in the present moment, it will be instrumental in your eventual success. Trust the process! Also, remember to transparently and shamelessly share your failures with others. Due to embarrassment, we tend to hide the fact that we fail at ten times the rate we succeed. This will only create a vicious feedback loop whereby everyone lives their life thinking they are the only ones who are failing and that everyone else succeeds effortlessly. As a result, people abandon their pursuits thinking that their failures are a sign that they will never succeed. It is only when we all dare to share our failures that we may all attain the success we strive for.
