I remember when one of my former students returned to visit
me. After chatting for a while I asked
her “what could our school have done to prepare you better for college?” Her answer was you needed to teach me how to
fail! Her answer totally took me by surprise
but now upon reflection I understand what she meant.
The research shows that there is not a strong correlation
with academic excellence and career success.
Now it is true that your academic record might open a few doors for you
when you apply for your first job but after a few years it has little bearing
on your career success.
Karen Arnold found in her research of Valedictorians that
even though they were successful they were not usually people who reached the
top of their fields (more)
That people who received straight “A’s”
were often conformist and that what was needed in industry was originality. That the “A” students settled into and did
fine in their career choice, but they were not likely to be the type of person
that shook the industry up.
That to be at the top of your industry you need to take
risks. That students who strive to be
number one or perfectionist usually are not taking risks for they fear that they
will fail. So, we are teaching them and rewarding them to play things close to
the vest and not to rock the boat.
That one of the problems of being perfect in school is that
you did not have to realize how to deal with failure? How to fall like a six but rebound like a
ten. That what my student was telling me
is that high school needs to be a place where students take risks and learn how
to rebound from setbacks. That at the
high school age many students have good support systems which will help them rebound
from these slight failures.
So, if you are
struggling with something right now, that is okay. Learn from your struggles as it is probably
preparing you for future success.
As always your feedback is welcome
Failure is something that has helped shape my life experience. I have never been the perfect student of perfect athlete. I have failed time and time again. The thing that benefits me is that when I fail I know I have to work ten times harder and come back even stronger. I have learned how to combat failure with hard work and I don't follow the traditional rules all the time. This allows me to find different ways to be successful after failure.
ReplyDelete-Stephen Ryan
This goes well with how my year in Economics has gone. I struggled on multiple quizzes in a row and knew that I needed to change something about my study habits. I've made the changes and on the past two quizzes I've gotten much better grades.
ReplyDelete- Chris Volley
I've found that failure has taught me many things about not only myself, but the school system as well. I also think it is very interesting that academic success does not correlate to career success. Most of my life, I've believed that if I did not do well in school I would fail, so this shines a new light.
ReplyDelete- Brennan Radke
Stephen, I think rebounding from failure is something we all need to learn. My student almost dropped out of school when she received a "B". It was her first failure and she did not know how to handle it well.
ReplyDeleteChris, I am glad that you were able to make changes and find success. One of the great things about economics is that it sometimes forces people to make changes in their routines which will also benefit them more in college.
Brennan, I think that it after your first job performance outshines your previous academic record. As the article pointed out great students do well but they are not the leaders of that field.
Thanks all of you for taking the time to respond.