Fail, just a little

This is a bit of an off track post, but an important one.

We all at some point fear failure, and some people become afraid of being afraid of failure, and begin a terrible cycle. Some quit, others end up with anxiety, some try to crawl into a hole of embarrassment not wanting anyone to know they have failed.

Let's be realistic. In any given week, half of the professional sports teams, where players are paid insane amounts on money, fail. They lose. Yet they still carry on, collect their pay and play again next time. They don't sit around letting it ruin their lives. Doctors, despite their best efforts, lose patients. They don't quit, they examine what happened and try to improve for next time.

As a teacher and a person with a load of nieces and nephews, failure is a lesson kids need to learn early and often. You need to let them fail at something, not be good at something, forget something along the way. My students who have faced adversity in family, activities, school, sports, life are so much more resilient. Kids need suggestions to handle the situation instead of someone always there to pick up the pieces for them or even worse, prevent all failure along the way. At some point the bubble wrap needs to come off the kids and some dings and dents will need to happen in order to develop some character and life skills. Let them figure it out-it builds character and makes them better future adults. Don't tell them they are smart, tell them their choices are smart or that you are proud of their accomplishments. A "Smart" kid feels like a complete failure when they find out you lied to them and they aren't smart because school is now a challenge and maybe they aren't so smart after all. Suddenly they have to work and study and don't know how to do that so they quit.

I stunk at math. It made no sense to me, processing numbers was not my thing. Geometry, much better but Algebra? Epic fail, even with my Dad being a math teacher. I wasn't allowed to just quit or drop to a lower level so I had to figure it out. There were many low grades along the way and an F on an exam. I still went to college, still got into National Honor Society and learned it was not the end of the world. I learned life still goes on, bad grades or not. Not that I am encouraging bad grades all along, but it didn't become my obsession. I knew I did the best I could and carried on. I even took that semester of Algebra over again and did better. I learned some valuable lessons about that.

In college I realized Elementary Education, my first choice, was not really what I wanted to do. I had no love for the coursework and school visits cemented my decision to teach upper grades. I had failed at choosing a major. I didn't quit. I sat in the office of the History Chair and asked for some suggestions. He suggested a change in major to History Education. I was convinced I'd never get a job but he rattled off a list of successful grads in that major. So I switched, I never looked back and changing majors, admitting failure of a sort, was the best thing. I am absolutely in my element, especially since I have students tell me how much they love history because of me, or that they became teachers because of me.

So fast forward to now. Stage 3C Melanoma. I had a choice. Do I try to beat this or just quit? There are many days when quitting sounds like a great choice. But then that means dead. Not really a great choice. I had to face failure again-pituitary, clinical trial. I had to relearn how to live. What if I had given up on my arm exercises? No range of motion. I knew how much worse it would be if I didn't fight or try.

So fail, just a little. It is good for the soul. Builds character. Teaches you how to carry on and overcome and makes you stronger. You never know when you will need that strength to live.